Anatomici summi septemdecim tabulae quas nunc primum edit atque explicat iisque alias addit de structura mammarum et de tunica testis vaginali Michael Girardi, in Regia Parmensi Universitate Anatomes Professor Primarius. . by SANTORINI, Giovanni Domenico - 1775

Parma: [Giambattista Bodoni for] Regia typographia, 1775. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. Folio (342 x 248 mm). [8], xxxv [1], 217 [3] pp., frontispiece portrait of the author and 42 folding engraved plates by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and others (including 21 outline key plates) bound-in at the end. Contemporary half vellum over xylographic paper boards, gilt lettering and ruling to spine (wear and some paper chipping at board edges, boards scratched, corners bumped). All pages uncut. Plates and text crisp and bright with only very minor spotting. Exceptional, unsophisticated copy. ----

Choulant-Frank, pp. 262-64; Garrison-Morton 399.1; Wellcome V, 22; Heirs of Hippocrates 788; Norman 1888; Cushing S66, Waller 8476. - FIRST EDITION. Santorini's posthumously published Septemdecim tabulae is noteworthy as the only significant medical book from the press of the great Italian printer Giambattista Bodoni, printer to the Duke of Parma and creator of the "modern" style typeface now named for him. Like William Hunter's Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus, Santorini's work is one of the very few medical books issued by a private press. The first 17 plates in the work, the "septemdecim tabulae" of the title, were drawn by Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682-1754), and engraved by Florentia Marcella under Santorini's personal supervision. Santorini intended them for an enlarged edition of his Observationes anatomicae (1724), but died before completing this task. The plates were published 38 years after Santorini's death by Michael Girardi, a professor of anatomy at Parma, who added to them two plates by the anatomist Giovanni Battista Covoli, as well as two of his own. Girardi also prepared the extensive commentary, using portions of Santorini's and Covoli's posthumous writings. Santorini's plates illustrate several complex gross features of the human body, including the facial muscles, organs of smell and hearing, the pharynx, the breasts, the diaphragm, the intestines, the bladder and the genitals. Covoli's plates show various parts of the female breast, as does Girardi's first plate; his second plate shows a partially dissected six-month fetus. Santorini's name has been given to the arytenoid cartilages, the risorius muscle and the plexus pudendalis venosus. - Visit our website to see more images!