OPERA OMNIA ANATOMICO-MEDICO-CHIRURGICA

1721. RUYSCH, Frederik. OPERA OMNIA ANATOMICO-MEDICO-CHIRURGICA. Huc usque edita. Quorum Elenchus pagina sequenti exhibetur. Cum figuris aeneis. Amstelodami, apud Janssonio-Waesbergios, 1721 [i.e. c. 1733]. 4 quarto volumes. Engraved title-page and portrait, 9 text illustrations, + 135 sheets of engraved illustrations. (The illustrations of jars and tableaux of skeletons in the Thesaurus anatomicus by Cornelius Huyberts are worthy of special note for their surreal combination of flowers, fishes, reptiles, seashells and delicate body parts.) This is a four-volume collection of separately published works by Ruysch or of works addressed to him by others; it also includes a life of Ruysch by J. F. Schreiber, a four-page table of contents (which lists only a portion of the works that comprise this set), and an index, dated 1725. The forty-four component works, in varying editions, were all printed by Jansson & Waesberge at Amsterdam from 1720-1733; each has a separate title-page and pagination. It represents a large portion of Ruysch's medical and scientific writings; and like almost every other copy of Opera Omnia, it varies in composition and completeness. A complete and detailed list of the contents of this set is available upon request. The condition of the text leaves and illustrations is very good overall, showing only occasional toning, soiling, or foxing. All four volumes will need to be rebound. All boards are detached and some of the bookblocks are split. Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731), a Dutch anatomist and botanist, was professor of anatomy at Leyden and Amsterdam. He is notable for his method of injecting vessels and for his mastery of anatomical preparations (- the preparation and preservation of specimens). Ruysch showed his preparations in a series of popular exhibitions in small rented houses in Amsterdam. His "cabinet" caught the eye of Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, who purchased it in 1717. Ruysch made a great number of discoveries in anatomy over the course of his long career; among them, the first description of bronchial blood vessels and vascular plexus of the heart, and the first description of the valves of the lymphatics. (DSB 12, pp. 39-41; Garrison and Morton, nos. 389 & 1099; Heirs to Hippocrates, pp. 219-223; Wellcome IV, pp. 596-601).