Details
LOWER, Richard (1631-1691). Tractatus de corde, item de mortu & colore sanguinis, & chyli in eum transitu. Amsterdam: Elzevir, 1671.
8o (158 x 88 mm). 6 engraved folding plates (cropped within platemark along foremargin, a bit creased). Contemporary calf (rebacked, worn).
Third edition, PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY LOWER IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION on the front flyleaf: "Ex dono Authoris Januarii vicesimo sexto 1671." After Harvey's De motu cordis, Lower's work is considered "the most important contribution to circulatory physiology" (Grolier Medicine). Lower was a London physician who had studied at Oxford, where he knew Thomas Willis, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. This work reports his observations on the scroll-like structure of the cardiac muscle, the velocity of blood flow and its quantity, as well as the effects of aeration on the blood as it passes through the lungs. Lower also described a blood transfusion between dogs, thus demonstrating the safety of a method that was later to revolutionize surgery. See Grolier Medicine 34; PMM 149; Waller 6046 for the first edition. Wellcome III, p.552.
8o (158 x 88 mm). 6 engraved folding plates (cropped within platemark along foremargin, a bit creased). Contemporary calf (rebacked, worn).
Third edition, PRESENTATION COPY, INSCRIBED BY LOWER IN THE YEAR OF PUBLICATION on the front flyleaf: "Ex dono Authoris Januarii vicesimo sexto 1671." After Harvey's De motu cordis, Lower's work is considered "the most important contribution to circulatory physiology" (Grolier Medicine). Lower was a London physician who had studied at Oxford, where he knew Thomas Willis, Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke. This work reports his observations on the scroll-like structure of the cardiac muscle, the velocity of blood flow and its quantity, as well as the effects of aeration on the blood as it passes through the lungs. Lower also described a blood transfusion between dogs, thus demonstrating the safety of a method that was later to revolutionize surgery. See Grolier Medicine 34; PMM 149; Waller 6046 for the first edition. Wellcome III, p.552.