Details
PURKINJE, Jan Evangelista (1787-1869). Beitrge zur Kenntniss des Sehens in subjecktiver Hinsicht. Prague: Johann Gottfried Calve, 1819.
8o (184 x 113 mm). Cancelled title-leaf; errata leaf; one folding engraved plate. Lacks fol. 1/1, section title(?). (Occasional light foxing; small tear to plate at gutter.) Disbound; folding morocco-backed case.
FIRST EDITION, second issue, of Purkinje's inaugural dissertation of 1818. Purkinje's interests ranged from embryology to education, and he is credited with an impressive variety of "firsts" (he was the first to classify fingerprints, the first to design a microtome, the first to use the word "protoplasma", etc.), but his field of primary concentration was physiology. He was a pioneer in the study of the physiology of perception, and the present thesis on subjective visual phenomena was one of the earliest works exclusively devoted to that subject. Lacking the facilities for more broadly-based experimental work, Purkinje was obliged to base his studies of subjective sensory phenomena entirely on self-observation. "He began self-observation of unusual visual sensations as an amusement in his early years but later realized that these phenomena--errors in perception, sensations with no adequate external cause, discrepancies between physical cause and evoked sensation--are not chance but have features in the structure or function of the eye and its nerve connections to the brain, or to some abnormal influence of certain stimulations" (DSB). Purkinje's dissertation "earned for him the appreciation of Goethe and the chair of physiology at Breslau" (Garrison-Morton).
Two issues are recorded of the 1819 edition, the second with a cancel title; the first issue title gives the publisher as Fr. Vetterl and describes the author as "Candidaten der Medicin" rather than "Doctor der Medicin". Both issues are RARE. Garrison-Morton 1492; Kruta, p. 77; Waller 7668; Norman 1763.
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FIRST EDITION, second issue, of Purkinje's inaugural dissertation of 1818. Purkinje's interests ranged from embryology to education, and he is credited with an impressive variety of "firsts" (he was the first to classify fingerprints, the first to design a microtome, the first to use the word "protoplasma", etc.), but his field of primary concentration was physiology. He was a pioneer in the study of the physiology of perception, and the present thesis on subjective visual phenomena was one of the earliest works exclusively devoted to that subject. Lacking the facilities for more broadly-based experimental work, Purkinje was obliged to base his studies of subjective sensory phenomena entirely on self-observation. "He began self-observation of unusual visual sensations as an amusement in his early years but later realized that these phenomena--errors in perception, sensations with no adequate external cause, discrepancies between physical cause and evoked sensation--are not chance but have features in the structure or function of the eye and its nerve connections to the brain, or to some abnormal influence of certain stimulations" (DSB). Purkinje's dissertation "earned for him the appreciation of Goethe and the chair of physiology at Breslau" (Garrison-Morton).
Two issues are recorded of the 1819 edition, the second with a cancel title; the first issue title gives the publisher as Fr. Vetterl and describes the author as "Candidaten der Medicin" rather than "Doctor der Medicin". Both issues are RARE. Garrison-Morton 1492; Kruta, p. 77; Waller 7668; Norman 1763.