Beschreibung:

PAR, Ambroise (1510-1590). La methode curative des playes, & fractures de la teste humaine. Avec les pourtraits des instruments necessaires pour la curation d'icelles . Paris: Jean le Royer, 28 February 1561. 8 o (161 x 107 mm). Collation: s4 * 8 ; A-Z Aa-Nn 8 . 300 leaves. Italic type, headings, prelims and shoulder notes in roman. Printer's woodcut device on title (Renouard 653), woodcut medallion portrait of the author aged 45, attributed to Jean Cousin on verso of title, 71 woodcuts, of which 33 full-page or nearly full-page, including 17 anatomical cuts of the head and thorax in part 1 (one repeated), the remainder in part 2 depicting surgical instruments, most consisting of several small blocks. Woodcut 7-, 6- and 4-line floriated initials and headpieces. Contemporary French limp vellum, vellum manuscript spine liner (lacking one of two pairs of original ties); modern half morocco folding case. Provenance : Johannes Christophorus Jrger, 1584 (inscription); unidentified owner (Sotheby's London, 29 June 1983, lot 44). FIRST EDITION. Ambroise Par's contributions to surgery were as revolutionary as they were short-lived. The son of an artisan, trained as a barber-surgeon (and hence ignorant of Latin), Par became a military surgeon and eventually attained the rank of premier chirurgien du roi under Charles IX and Henri II. Having accidentally discovered, in the heat of the battle of Turin in 1536, that the gentle dressing of gunshot wounds possessed far superior curative powers to the traditional painful technique of cauterization, Par pursued this unheard-of treatment, experimenting with various dressings, and published his discoveries in 1545 in his first book, La methode de traicter les playes . Although Par embraced the traditional medieval belief in the humoral basis for health and illness, he continued to develop his empirically based surgical methods, which included the practice of ligaturing blood vessels after amputation to control hemorrhage as well as improvements in obstetrical surgery, and he even invented new surgical instruments for his purposes. His innovations won him both the fervent support of his noble clientele and the violent opposition of the medical establishment, culminating in attempts by the Paris Faculty of Medicine to suppress his works, which were particularly widely disseminated because of their use of the vernacular. For a time after Par's death his writings continued to circulate throughout Europe, but in France the reactionary pressure of medical academia forced a reversion to the old methods within 50 years. Par's discoveries were not to be revived until the abolition of the Faculty of Medicine during the French Revolution. The present work is a treatise on the treatment of head wounds, written in response to an inquiry following the accidental death in 1559 of Henri II, who was struck in the eye by a lance during a wedding tournament. The first part ( L'anatomie de la teste humaine ), which was also printed in Par's Anatomie universelle [1561], is devoted to the anatomy of the head and cranial regions and is illustrated with woodcuts after Vesalius. In the second part ( La methode de traicter les playes & fractures de la teste ) Par describes his methods of treatment of head wounds, skull fractures, and diseases of the facial organs, illustrating the text with abundant figures of his surgical instruments, some printed from blocks previously used in his Maniere de traicter les playes (1552). Like all editions of Par's works published during his lifetime, this one is EXTREMELY RARE. The Norman copy is IN ENTIRELY ORIGINAL CONDITION. Doe 12; Garrison-Morton 4850.3; NLM/Durling 3524; Norman 1639.