Opera omnia : figuris elegantissimis in æs incisis illustrata by MALPIGHI, Marcello - 1686

London: Thomas Sawbridge, 1686. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Two volumes bound in one. Folio (364 x 227 mm). Main titles of both volumes printed in red and black, vol. I with engraved allegorical frontispiece; in total 116 full-size engraved plates plus 7 smaller engraved plates; appendix De Ovo Incubato, De Bombyce, Pulli in Ovo and Epistolae anatomicae each with separate half-title. Pagination: Vol. I: [8], 15, [5], 1-78 (i.e. 82] p., LIV plates (15 folding), [2], 11 [1] p., VII plates, 13-35 [1] p. Vol. II: [8], 72 p, XXXIX plates; [4], 65-68, 5-44 p., XII plates; [4], 1-12 p., IV plates, 13-20 p.; [2], 1-6 p., 1 plate (folding), 7-8 p., 1 plate (folding), 9-20 p., 3 plates (folding), 21-144 p., 2 plates (folding). Bound without final blank leaf. Contemporary calf, rebacked with gilt-lettered morocco label, boards tooled in blind, corners restored, brown-dyed edges, original endpapers (boards rubbed and worn, flyleaf re-attached). Interior with occasional minor browning and foxing, dust- and finger-soiling; the plates generally quite bright and free of spotting. Provenance: Thomas Brotherton of Hey (bookplate on verso of title leaf); Stewart of Glasston (bookplate on front pastedown); inscription on first flyleaf and head of first title dated April 14, 1687. Very good, complete copy. A sometimes mentioned portrait and additional frontispiece to volume II is not an original part of this first edition. ----

FIRST EDITION and one of the grandest productions of the Royal Society, with the rare frontispiece; this handsome folio contains the collected works of Malpighi (1628-94), the founder of histology and the greatest of the microscopists; they are today very scarce on the market. This is the first complete edition of his collected works published during his lifetime and a splendid example of bookmaking. Included here are Malpighi's great masterpieces on the anatomy of plants, the embryonic development of the chick (which makes him the founder of descriptive or iconographic embryology), the anatomy of the silkworm (the first monograph on an invertebrate), the discovery of the existence of capillaries (which completed the chain of the circulation of the blood postulated by Harvey), and his observations on the lungs (which overthrew the current conceptions of the pulmonary tissues demonstrating their true vesicular nature). Malpighi's writings were first collected in Le Clerc and Manget's Bibliotheca Anatomica (Geneva: 1685), but without his Anatome Plantarum and De Bombyce. Also, "the two folio volumes of this London edition are far more handsomely printed, in much larger type, and the drawings are beautifully reproduced and widely spaced upon the plates" (Adelmann, I, p. 509).
References: Sparrow, Milestones of Science, 141; Wing M342B, M344; cf. Garrison-Morton 66, variant imprint; cf. NLM/Krivatsy 7319; Nissen 2656. - Visit our website to see more images!