?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
Descartes, René (1596-1650) De Homine Figuris et Latinitate Donatus a Florentio Schuyl.
Leiden: Moyardum & Leffen, 1662.
First edition, quarto, woodcut printer's device with laurel tree to title (other issues use a printer's device with a phoenix), illustrated with numerous text engravings, woodcuts and nine full-paged engravings extraneous to collation; plate with parts meant to be pasted on the verso of the moveable flaps in the heart illustration trimmed from the original sheet and present but pasted in the wrong locations on the front and back of the leaf; bound in contemporary parchment boards, somewhat worn, later endleaves, engraved armorial bookplate of Alexander Thomson of Banchory pasted inside front board, 8 x 6 1/4 in.
In this, the first published textbook concerned with physiology, Descartes understands the working of the human body as purely mechanistic.
Garrison-Morton 574; Grolier Medicine 31; Norman 627; NLM/Krivatsy 3120; Osler 931; Tchemerzine II, p.798 (describing the two variants of the title-page, no priority mentioned); Waller 2376; Wellcome II page 453.
