LANDMARK PLATES OF THE BRAIN. Planches pour le Traite de l'Anatomie du Cerveau de Vicq-d'Azyr, Felix - 1813

Paris: Louis Duprat-Duverger, 1813. New edition.

1813 ATLAS OF THE ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN BY FELIX VICQ-D'AZYR, "THE GREATEST COMPARATIVE ANATOMIST OF THE 18TH CENTURY."

10 1/2 inches tall hardcover, brown paper covered boards, recent black cloth spine with gilt leather label, decorative bookplate to front paste-down of Charles Atwood Kofoid; title page, frontispiece allegorical engraving depicting Anatomy revealing Medicine and Art by Girodet (after Alexandre Briceau), engraved by Robert De Launay, 35 copper plate engravings of the human brain (8 folding), 4 plates of comparative anatomy each containing multiple images. Covers soiled, light browning to page edges, scattered light foxing, fine plate impressions, very good.

FELIX VICQ-D'AZYR (1748-1794) was a French physician and anatomist, the originator of comparative anatomy and discoverer of the theory of homology in biology. He graduated in medicine at the University of Paris and became a renowned and brilliant animal and human anatomist and physician. From 1773 Vicq d'Azyr taught a celebrated course of anatomy at the Jardin du Roi, currently the Museum of Natural History, in Paris. He was the last physician of Queen Marie-Antoinette, whom he tried to protect. Additionally he was a professor of veterinary medicine at the School of Alfort, as well as Superintendent of epidemics. As an anatomist he was one of the first to use coronal sections of the brain and to use alcohol to aid dissection. In 1786, he described the locus coeruleus, the locus niger (substantia nigra) in the brain, and subsequently the band of Vicq d'Azyr, a fiber system between the external granular layer and the external pyramidal layer of the cerebral cortex, as well as the mamillo-thalamic tract, which bears his name. His systematic studies of the cerebral convolutions became a classic and Vicq d'Azyr was one of the first neuroanatomists to name the gyri. He studied the deep gray nuclei of the cerebrum and the basal ganglia. During the French Revolution he was elected to the Commission temporaire des arts, where he was charged with determining the future of anatomical education in France. Vicq d'Azyr died of tuberculosis during The Terror. His dramatic biography describes him as spending his last remaining years shaken by nightmares and terrified of the guillotine.

ANNE-LOUIS GIRODET DE ROUSSY-TRIOSON (1767 – 1824), was a French painter and pupil of Jacques-Louis David, who participated in the early Romantic movement by including elements of eroticism in his paintings. Girodet is remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of members of the Napoleonic family. Both of his parents died when he was a young adult. The care of his inheritance and education fell to his guardian, a prominent physician named Benoît-François Trioson, "médecin-de-mesdames", who later adopted him. Girodet was a member of the Academy of Painting and of the Institut de France, a knight of the Order of Saint Michael, and officer of the Legion of Honor.

ROBERT DELAUNAY (1749-1814) was the younger brother of the king's engraver, Nicolas de Launay , who taught him the art of engraving.

See GARRISON-MORTON No. 401.2, "The most accurate neuroanatomical work produced before the advent of microscopic staining techniques. Vicq d'Azyr identified accurately for the first time many of the cerebral convolutions, along with various internal structures of the brain. This was the first volume of an ambitious study of anatomy and physiology which remained unfinished at Vicq d'Azyr's premature death." and No. 314, "Vicq d'Azyr has been called the greatest comparative anatomist of the 18th century. The mammillo-thalamic tract is named the "bundle of Vicq d'Azyr".

PROVENANCE: CHARLES ATWOOD KOFOID (1865 - 1947) was an American zoologist known for his collection and classification of many new species of marine protozoans which established marine biology on a systematic basis. A faculty member of the University of California, Berkeley he was an early advocate for the development of a marine station in La Jolla that would later become the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.