De Monstruorum natura causis et differentiis, libri duo

LICETI, Fortunio

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Bibliografische Details

Verlag: Padua Paulo Frambotti 1634.
Erscheinungsdatum: 1634
Einband:
Auflage: 1st Edition

Beschreibung:

Large 4to., (8) ff., 262 pp., (13) ff., including elaborately engraved title, 52 half and 5 quarter page plates. Bound in contemporary stiff vellum, raised bands on spine, with title stenciled in ink on spine. Some spotting & light foxing in upper margin, a bit more extensive in 2-3 quires, otherwise very good. First illustrated and best edition of this treatise on teratology, "one of the earliest classifications of deformities" (Garrison-Morton) and a staple of pathological anatomy into the nineteenth century. The work is also of more general cultural interest for betraying the widespread Baroque fascination with natural deformities -- think of the dwarfs in Velazquez or the taste for mirabilia fostered in the audience for emblem books, which Liceti’s often fantastic plates recall. On the considerable vogue enjoyed by monsters in more or less popular literature, see now Daston/Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature, passim, with reproduction of title, p. 226). Liceti defines monsters as humans or animals whose course of natural development is checked at some point and constructs his typology according to the time when this supposedly occurred: during conception, gestation, delivery or even after birth. He also considers the role of inherited traits and considers the possibility of natural monsters, that is, a species that is not an imperfect or deformed specimen of a natural kind but a radically new combination: a rodent with a human head, etc. The examples are culled without evident discrimination from mirabilia literature as well as the author’s reading in pathological anatomy and contemporary case studies. In addition to the first appearance of the plates, this edition is augmented by a substantial number of cases observed by Liceti after the first edition of 1616. The latter is listed third in Garrison’s chronology of early teratological works. Yet another edition followed in 1665. Liceti (1577-1657) was Professor Ordinarius at Padua and wrote on comets and optics among other subjects. * Krivatsy 6958; Caillet II.498; G-M 534.52 (1616 ed.); Castiglione, History of Medicine, pp. 441-2 (with illustration). Buchnummer des Verkäufers 1189