HARVEY, William (1578-1657) - фото 1
HARVEY, William (1578-1657) - фото 2
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HARVEY, William (1578-1657)

Лот 176
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
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CHRISTIE'S
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Место проведенияВеликобритания, London
Комиссияsee on Website%
ID 1514450
Лот 176 | HARVEY, William (1578-1657)
Оценочная стоимость
£ 800 000 – 1 200 000
HARVEY, William (1578-1657)
Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus. Frankfurt: William Fitzer, 1628.
First edition, announcing the discovery of the circulation of blood. One of the rarest and most important books in the history of medicine and biological science. The Letherland-Osler copy. Harvey ‘revolutionized physiological thought, …. inspired a whole new generation of anatomists, [and] his work was one of the major triumphs of early modern science’ (DSB 5/6, p.151).

Harvey’s surviving anatomical lecture notes of 1616 show him already deeply engaged in investigating the function of the veins, heart and respiration. He was aware of the work of predecessors such as Realdo Colombo on pulmonary circulation (1559) and Girolamo Fabrici (with whom he had studied at Padua) on the venous valves (1574) as well as the ongoing tension between Galenic and Aristotelian approaches to physiology as he set out on his own anatomical investigations.

Harvey built on this prior knowledge ‘to conceive the idea of a circulation of the entire blood system, and demonstrate it conclusively by an exhaustive series of dissections and physiological experiments' (PMM). It all coalesced in the idea of a circle: the blood making a one-way circuit throughout the body, flowing through the veins, into the heart, pumped to the lungs for oxygenation, returned to the heart, pumped into the arteries and then throughout the body, before returning via the veins. In presenting his new discovery, Harvey begins by setting out the errors in prior medical knowledge before detailing his various experiments and demonstrations that prove it. His slim treatise may thus be even ‘more important as a demonstration of scientific method in biological research than as an annunciation of the fact of the circulation of the blood’ (Keynes p.3).

Harvey’s discovery was largely accepted in his lifetime. One important supporter was Descartes, who accepted his main theory but not the idea of the heart as an involuntary pumping muscle. Nonetheless, Harvey’s work formed the basis for Descartes’s own mechanistic physiology, and some scientists ‘regarded the discovery as of equal importance with Copernican astronomy or Galilean physics’ (PMM).

De motu cordis was printed at Frankfurt by William Fitzer, an English printer active there, almost certainly on the recommendation of Harvey’s friend, Robert Fludd. The engraved plates which illustrate the work were modelled on the illustration in Fabrici’s De venarum ostiolis (Padua: 1603). The paper used by Fitzer to print both text and plates has notoriously browned with age in virtually all surviving copies. Also, an errata leaf was issued, probably after most of the edition had been distributed; it is frequently lacking, as here.

De motu cordis has been ‘considered one of the rarest books in the history of medicine since as far back as the eighteenth century’ (Norman). No copy has sold at auction in a generation (since 2001); and according to RBH only five copies have sold at auction in a century to which may be added the Mikhailovich (1995) and Honeyman (1979) copies. The 1989 census of copies updated by G. Whitteridge and C. English cites 67 copies, almost all in institutional collections.

The present copy has distinguished provenance across the centuries. Its earliest documented owner was Joseph Letherland, M.D.. Admitted Fellow of the College of Physicians in 1737, he ‘was a man of deep and very extensive learning’ . He had studied at the renowned medical faculty at Leiden and attended lectures by Boerhaave, whose own work was highly influenced by Harvey. Letherland also served as physician to the queen and was elected physician to St. Thomas’s hospital in 1736 where he served for over 30 years. The book’s next documented owner was none other than the renowned doctor and collector, Sir William Osler. Osler was virtually a clearing house of copies of De motu cordis in the first decades of the 20th-century, directing copies from dealers and auction houses to numerous libraries internationally. He had first bid on a copy in 1916 with the intention to give it to the Royal Society of Medicine, but he was outbid by a New York dealer. The next year, he bought the present copy through Quaritch, recording the circumstances of the acquisition thus: ‘June 12th 1917. Received to-day from Quaritch a copy of de Motu Cordis, which I have presented to the Library of the Royal Soc. of Medicine. It was a rough looking specimen with the title-page cut – the line of date “anno &c” cut across. Q. sent it to Riviere & Son who have made it a beautiful copy and added in facsimile the leaf of errata. It cost £24.’ Osler’s own library was presented to McGill University, including another copy of De motu cordis, in which the above notes of his purchase of other copies is recorded. Somewhat curiously, the present copy is described in Keynes’s census as having the errata leaf, despite the fact its errata leaf has been known as facsimile since Weil’s listing of 1944 (E. Weil, ‘William Fitzer, The Publisher of Harvey’s De Motu Cordis, 1628’, The Library 1944, 142-164, p.161, footnote 12).

Quarto (176 x 121mm). 36 leaves, errata leaf K1 in facsimile. Two folding engraved plates, printer’s engraved device on title-page, ornamental woodcut initials, woodcut or typographical head-pieces and tail-piece. (Title lined on blank verso with part of the date replaced, folded at outer edge with fold reinforced and short closed tear at fore-edge, partly detached, marginal fore-edge chips in A2-3, tiny fore-edge tears elsewhere, last leaf rehinged, small area of lower margin on both plates renewed, one plate with short, neat tear, a few shoulder notes shaved, lightly browned.) Blue crushed morocco gilt by Riviere and Son, triple fillet border on sides, gilt spine and turn-ins (front hinge expertly repaired). Provenance: Joseph Letherland, physician (1699-1764; faint signature ‘J. Letherland’ on title verso) – Sir William Osler (1849-1919; acquired from Quaritch, 1917; presentation inscription and bookplate date July 1917 to:) – Royal Society of Medicine (bookplate, stamp on title verso). ont hinge expertly repaired). Provenance: Joseph Letherland (1699-1764; faint signature ‘J. Letherland’ on title verso) – Sir William Osler (presentation inscription and bookplate date July 1917 to: – Royal Society of Medicine (bookplate, stamp on title verso).
Место происхождения:Западная Европа, Германия, Европа
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