.jpg?w=1)
Details
MASCAGNI, Paolo. Vasorum lymphaticorum corporis humani historia et ichnographia. Siena: Pazzini Carli, 1787.
Broadsheets (594 x 424 mm). 41 engraved plates including 14 outline plates by Ciro Santi (few leaves with minor marginal dampstaining). Contemporary boards, uncut (rebacked with mottled calf, calf corners). Provenance: Giuseppe Tossano (19th-century signature on front free endpaper); Haskell F. Norman (bookplate; his sale part II, Christie's New York, 15 June 1998, lot 649).
FIRST EDITION. Mascagni's extremely detailed discoveries of naked-eye anatomical distribution of the lymphatics could only be described through illustrations. For this purpose Mascagni hired Ciro Santi, a painter and engraver from Bologna who lived in Sienna until about 1780. Santi prepared 27 drawings and engraved 27 spectacular copperplates and 16 key plates. These depict vessels in some of the finest detail present in anatomical illustration before the advent of photography.
Mascagni discovered half of the lymphatic vessels now known. Using the mercury injection method, which he perfected, and a tubular needle bent at a right angle, he observed, named and described almost all the lymph glands and vessels in the human body, concluding that the lymphatic system originates from all internal and external cavities and surfaces of the body, and that it is related to the absorbing function. He demonstrated the connection between the lymphs and serous vessels, and disproved Boerhaave's theory of arterial and venous lymphatics by showing that they did not exist. Choulant-Frank, p. 315-316; Garrison-Morton 1104; Heirs of Hippocrates 1099; Norman 1450; Waller 6295.
Broadsheets (594 x 424 mm). 41 engraved plates including 14 outline plates by Ciro Santi (few leaves with minor marginal dampstaining). Contemporary boards, uncut (rebacked with mottled calf, calf corners). Provenance: Giuseppe Tossano (19th-century signature on front free endpaper); Haskell F. Norman (bookplate; his sale part II, Christie's New York, 15 June 1998, lot 649).
FIRST EDITION. Mascagni's extremely detailed discoveries of naked-eye anatomical distribution of the lymphatics could only be described through illustrations. For this purpose Mascagni hired Ciro Santi, a painter and engraver from Bologna who lived in Sienna until about 1780. Santi prepared 27 drawings and engraved 27 spectacular copperplates and 16 key plates. These depict vessels in some of the finest detail present in anatomical illustration before the advent of photography.
Mascagni discovered half of the lymphatic vessels now known. Using the mercury injection method, which he perfected, and a tubular needle bent at a right angle, he observed, named and described almost all the lymph glands and vessels in the human body, concluding that the lymphatic system originates from all internal and external cavities and surfaces of the body, and that it is related to the absorbing function. He demonstrated the connection between the lymphs and serous vessels, and disproved Boerhaave's theory of arterial and venous lymphatics by showing that they did not exist. Choulant-Frank, p. 315-316; Garrison-Morton 1104; Heirs of Hippocrates 1099; Norman 1450; Waller 6295.