MALPIGHI, Marcello.

Opera Omnia.

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Engraved allegorical frontis. in Vol. I & 123 engraved plates (including the 7 small ones). Titlesprinted in red & black with engraved arms of the Royal Society. 3 p.l., 15 pp., 2 leaves, 78 (i.e. 82], 1 leaf, 35 pp., 2 leaves, 72 pp.; 3 p.l., 44 pp., 2 leaves, 20 pp., 1 leaf, 144 pp. (several leaves misbound). Two vols. in one. Folio, cont. blindstamped with arabesque design & panelled vellum over boards (binding a little soiled, some browning and/or foxing as is usual with this book), spine gilt, red morocco lettering piece on spine. London: R. Scott, 1686. [bound with]:—. Opera Posthuma...quibus praefixa est eiusdem Vita. Engraved frontis. port. & 19 engraved plates. Title printed in red & black with engraved arms of the Royal Society. 1 p.l., 110, 187 pp. Folio (some occasional browning and/or foxing as is typical). London: A. & J. Churchill, 1697. [bound with]:—. De Structura Glandularum Conglobatarum Consimiliumque Partium, Epistola. 1 p.l., 10 pp. Folio. London: R. Chiswell, 1697. First editions and one of the grandest productions of the Royal Society; this handsome folio contains the collected works of Malpighi (1628-94), the founder of histology and the greatest of the microscopists; they are today very scarce on the market. The first title is the first complete edition of his collected works published during his lifetime; all three works are splendid examples of bookmaking. Included here are Malpighi’s great masterpieces on the anatomy of plants, the embryonic development of the chick (which makes him the founder of descriptive or iconographic embryology), the anatomy of the silkworm (the first monograph on an invertebrate), the discovery of the existence of capillaries (which completed the chain of the circulation of the blood postulated by Harvey), and his observations on the lungs (which overthrew the current conceptions of the pulmonary tissues demonstrating their true vesicular nature). Malpighi’s writings were first collected in Le Clerc and Manget’s Bibliotheca Anatomica (Geneva: 1685), but without his Anatome Plantarum and De Bombyce. Also, “the two folio volumes of this London edition are far more handsomely printed, in much larger type, and the drawings are beautifully reproduced and widely spaced upon the plates” (Adelmann). Very good copies. With the fine and large late 17th-century engraved armorial bookplate of Pierre de Chalud. ❧ Adelmann, I, p. 509. Frati 2, 4, & 4bis. I. Garrison-Morton 66. Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 141.

• USD 15,000.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: HillBibl-1404

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