SCULTETUS, Johannes.

Cheiroplotheke [:in Greek], seu Armamentarium Chirurgicum.

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43 finely engraved plates. Woodcut printer’s device on title. Title printed in red & black. 1 p.l., 10, 132, [3] pp. Folio, cont. vellum over boards (minor browning). Ulm: B. Kühnen, 1655. First edition of the most influential and widely-read illustrated surgical treatise of the 17th century. Our first edition is the only one in folio; all of the dozens of later editions and translations were in quarto or octavo and, consequently, the plate images suffered from being greatly reduced. This book was posthumously published by the author’s nephew Scultetus the Younger. At his death in 1645, Scultetus ranked with Fabry von Hilden as the leading German surgeon; he invented many devices and bandages, including the many-tailed “Scultetus bandage” used in abdominal wounds. His Armamentarium gives the best picture of 17th-century surgical practice, illustrating such procedures as amputation of the breast, reduction of dislocations, forceps delivery, neurosurgery, etc. The work includes a complete catalogue of all known surgical instruments, of the methods of bandaging and splinting, and of a vast number of operative procedures, all of which are illustrated in graphic detail by means of numerous plates which were never again published in their original folio size. This work is also significant in the history of dentistry and dental instruments. Scultetus had been a pupil of Spigelius, successor to Fabricius ab Aquapendente, and his Armamentarium published some of the first illustrations of the dental instruments described by Fabricius in his Opera Chirurgica (1619). Fine copy preserved in a morocco-backed box. Bound-in is a copy of the third edition of François de le Boë Sylvius’ Opera Medica (Geneva: 1681). “This large and sumptuous work comprises Sylvius’ major medical writings, and shows his emphasis on the use of physiological chemistry in the practice of clinical medicine. A large section is devoted to diseases of the lung, in which particular emphasis is given to tuberculosis. It was Sylvius who first demonstrated that tubercles could coalesce and form the cavitations typical of the tuberculous lung...Unlike the 1679 edition of the Opera, this edition contains a fine frontispiece portrait of Sylvius by J. L. Durant and a large woodcut printer’s device on the red and black title-page.”–Heirs of Hippocrates 503. ❧ Scultetus: Garrison-Morton 5571. Heirs of Hippocrates 466. Zimmerman & Veith, Great Ideas in the History of Surgery, pp. 249-53–“contains a complete catalogue of all known surgical instruments, of the methods of bandaging and splinting, and of a vast number of operative procedures, all of which are illustrated in graphic detail by means of numerous plates. In addition, it contains a large number of case reports which give evidence of [Scultetus’] surgical daring and skill.”

• USD 57,500.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: HillBibl-1412

• bookseller: Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc. (USA)