Essays On The Floating-Matter Of The Air,: In Relation To Putrefaction And Infection.

London: Longmans, Green, and Co.,, 1881. First collected edition of the author's extensive researches into disease, germ theory, and spontaneous generation (which he strenuously rejects). The essays had originally been published in various scientific journals, most notably in the Philosophical Transactions, in the 1860s and 1870s. John Tyndall (1820-1893), a leading experimental physicist and colleague of Faraday, remains known for his research into the relationship between climate and atmospheric vapours. In this respect, he is credited with establishing the experimental basis for the greenhouse effect, as the first to prove quantitatively that atmospheric gases absorbed and emitted radiant heat and thus raised the Earth's temperature. The present work illustrates a lesser-studied aspect of his scientific work. This copy comes from the collection of Hardwicke Knight (1911-2008) and bears his bookplate on the front pastedown. Knight, a historian, collector, and self-acknowledged eccentric, worked for many years as a medical photographer in the UK and, following his emigration in 1957, New Zealand. The front pastedown also contains the bookseller's ticket of Newbolds - an antiquarian dealer active in New Zealand until 1964. This suggests that Knight acquired this copy in the early years after his emigration to the Antipodes. Octavo. Original purple cloth, spine lettered in gilt and ruled in blind, covers panelled with blind-stamped floral ornament, grey coated endpapers. Numerous wood-engraved illustrations and tables in the text, leaf of publisher's advertisements at rear. Loosely-inserted carte de visite of Tyndall by Edwards & Bult. Light bumping and rubbing, faint sunning to spine, sporadic light foxing to endpapers and contents: a very good copy.