ASELLI, Gaspare (1581-1625)

Lot 175
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Lieu de l'événementRoyaume-Uni, London
Commissionsee on Website%
ID 1514425
Lot 175 | ASELLI, Gaspare (1581-1625)
Valeur estimée
£ 5 000 – 7 000
ASELLI, Gaspare (1581-1625)
De lactibus sive lacteis venis. Milan: Giovanni Battista Bidelli, 1627.
First edition of the first book with anatomical illustrations printed in colour. ‘While performing vivisection on a dog that had recently fed, Aselli noticed a network of vessels in the mesentry and along the peritoneal surface of the intestine. The vessels released a whitish fluid similar to milk when incised, so Aselli called them “lacteas, sive albas venas”. He made a systematic study of these vessels in different species of animals, noting the chronological relationship between their engorgement and the animal’s last meal, and erroneously conjecturing that the vessels led to the liver; it was not until Jean Pecquet’s discovery of the thoracic duct and its continuity with the lacteal vessels that the process of absorption was clearly established’ (Norman), and in the decades before publication of Harvey's De motu cordis (1628), the liver was still considered to be the centre of the venous system. Aselli's report of his findings – the only one of his studies to appear in print – was published after his death through the efforts of Nicolas Fabry de Peiresc, the 16th-century patron of science. In its use of colour printing to more accurately distinguish the different types of vessels depicted, De lactibus was the ‘first publication to use colored illustrations in the interest of scientific accuracy’ (Grolier Medicine). The striking woodcuts, which appear in this edition only, have been attributed to either Cesare Bassano or to his associate Domenico Falcini. Subsequent editions were illustrated with black and white reduced engraved copies of the original woodcuts. Choulant-Frank, pp. 240-241; Durling-NLM 446; Garrison-Morton 1094; Grolier Medicine 26; Heirs of Hippocrates 453; Norman 76; Wellcome I:6837.

Quarto (208 x 157mm). Four-leaf index bound at end. Engraved title by Cesare Bassano, two large folding chiaroscuro woodcut plates printed in black, red and two shades of brown, woodcut initials and head-piece (lacking two folding woodcut plates and portrait leaf (3†ii), title and two following leaves detached from main textblock, title chipped and darkened at edges, tiny tear at base of first folding woodcut, pinprick hole at fold of second woodcut, occasional dampstaining). 20th-century calf (upper board detached). Provenance: Royal Society of Medicine (ink stamp on title [Medical and Chirurgical Society] and prefatory letter).
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