Anatomia chirurgica Cioè istoria anatomica dell'ossa, e muscoli del corpo humano Con la descrittione de Vasi più riguardevoli che scorrono per le par

THE ""FIRST BOOK DEVOTED ENTIRELY TO SURGICAL ANATOMY."" First edition. Rome: Nicolò Angelo Tinassi, 1672. Small octavo (6 1/16"" x 3 13/16"", 154mm x 97mm): a12 A-Ee8 Ff4 [$4 signed; -a1]. 240 leaves, pp. [24] (title, blank, 4pp. dedication, 6pp. to the reader, 4pp. to students, 6pp. contents, imprimaturs, blank), 1-455, [1] (corrigenda). Bound in contemporary vellum. On the spine, author and title (GENGA/ANATOM/CHIRUR) gilt to a morocco label. Inventory number (109) ink manuscript to the spine. All edges of the text-block speckled red. Worming to the spine, the front pastedown through C5, Ff3-4 and the rear end-papers. Indications of damp to the lower spine-edge, particularly X4-Ff4. Ink-stain to the upper fore-corner of Ee7v through to the end. Loss to the fore-corner of B1, not affecting the text. Foxed and offset. Lacking the engraved frontispiece. Paper label in ink manuscript (an XVIIc hand?) to the front paste-down: ""Scanzia A. Ord.e 2.o/Num.o 28"". Ticket of B.H. Blackwell to the lower edge of the front paste-down, with a catalogue description (completed in graphite: ""Ex Blackwell 149"") tipped in alongside. Bernardino Genga (1620-1691) was both a medical doctor and a Classicist, editing the works of Hippocrates as well as carrying out his own investigations and demonstrations. Genga was a surgeon at the first hospital in Europe, the Arcispedale (Arch-Hospital) di Santo Spirito in Sassia -- famous for its ""baby hatch"" for the anonymous deposition of orphans into its care. The Anatomia chirurgica was the first manual purely of anatomy for surgeons, and as such was reprinted many times; the first edition is quite rare; only three copies have come to auction (Rare Book Hub; 6 sales, twice bought in and one copy -- ours -- having appeared thrice) and fewer than two dozen copies recorded in institutional collections (OCLC). His posthumous (1691) Anatomia famously analyzed the physiology of ancient statues, including the Laocoön and the Spinario. The work itself is divided into three sections. Book I treats the bones, book II the muscles. At the end (pp. 420-448) is the first Italian account accepting Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood -- though Genga, a proud Italian, credits the discovery to his Roman predecessors (p. 432: ""avanti d'Harveo fù dimonstrata da Professori Italiani Medici Romani cioè Realdo Colombo & Andrea Cesalpino"") -- an exceptionally important discovery both for surgery and for general medicine. Because the work has come to auction so rarely, it's possible to track its provenance a little more closely. The shelf-mark pasted in at the front paste-down suggests an Italian provenance, unsurprisingly. In 1947 the copy -- identifiable by its worm-holes and by the recorded buyer: Blackwell -- was sold by Sotheby's London (17 March and following days) in a various-owner sale; the ""collection of books on Medicine and Surgery from the XVI to the XIX century"" came from the collection ""of The Late Otto Krishaber, Esq."" Otto Krishaber (sometimes known as Kennedy, 1874-?1946) emigrated from Budapest to Mayfair. He was a stock-broker and a director of the Maikop Pipe Line & Transport Co. in the early 1910's. The volume was then sold on by Blackwell and handled by at least one further dealer before being offered by Lyon & Turnbull in 2017 at first on its own (unsuccessfully) and then as part of a group lot of medical books, which was acquired by Arader. Garrison-Morton 384.