Books offered by JF Ptak Science Books LLC

Paper Brain Dissection II--1876

Witkowski, Gustave Joseph.  Brain dissection, ca. 1876-1878.  10.5 inches at its widest measurement.  Chromolithographs.  3 sheets, folding, with four other moveable pieces.  Rare.  Offered as-is, lacking the original portfolio with printed key.  $200

Earlier in this blog I posted about a lateral dissection of the human brain accomplished via 150-year-old engravings.  The images below come from a series of atlases created by Gustave Joseph Witkowski (1844-1923) called Anatomie Iconoclastique, and include the one I have here on the skull and brain. I think that they are gorgeous works.  (The original, available at our blog bookstore, measures about ten inches at its widest).  

Classic Work in Mathematical Epidemiology

Norman T.J. Bailey.  The Mathematical Theory of Epidemics.  New York, HAfner Publishing COmpany, 1957.  First edition, 194pp.  Cloth. Very fine condition.  $175.00  Bailey is one of the earliest to employ stochastic process to the study of epidemiology, and includes  a seven-page bibliography (a substantial list for the time) as well.  This is a lovely copy, really. 

 

History of Normalcy Series: Warehousing "Defective" Epileptics, 1912

ITEM:  Dr. William T. Shanahan, Colonies for Epileptics, 1912. 9x6, 7pp.  Original printed wrappers.  Good copy.  $95

Ref:  JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1450

This series is meant to illustrate the very transitory, shadowy and basically non-existent nature of "normal".

"It is thus with regard to the disease called Sacred: it appears to me to be nowise more divine nor more sacred than other diseases, but has a natural cause like other affections. . ."--Hippocrates on epilepsy and recognizing it as just another brain disorder devoid of mysticism, about 2400 years ago.

One stop in the history of normalcy is the perception of brain disorders, which is a long and complex history--very long in the case of epilepsy, its epidemiology stretching back thousands of years before Hippocrates.  It particular normalcy for the vast majority of that time was that people who exhibited the results of the disorder were cursed, or touched by the gods as holders of some possible divine inspiration, or touched by the gods as accursed and punished people, or bewitched (I wonder about the number of epileptics put to the flame during the Witch Hunt crazes), and so on.  The first pharmaceutical treatments for the disorder really didn't come about until Emil Fischer and Bayer introduced phenobarbitol in 1902/04, which was able to calm the seizures of some people with epilepsy.  Until that point, most treatments were generally topical, plus the quack ingestives and various sorts of incantations, spells and prayers. 

In Dr. William T. Shanahan's Colonies for Epiletpics, written in 1912, the treatment of epileptics was seculsion, warehousing them in state asylums in the countryside.  Shananhan felt that the epileptic needed "its" own environment, "apart from the the defectives"--and by that he meant apart from the wide classification of people who did not fit the scheme of 1912 normalcy, like "morons, imbeciles, the insane, the sexual addict, the recurring syphlitic [and] the criminally insane...".  Actually this as a good move in some cases--apart from the vocabulary--as epileptics were stored away in almshouses and prisons along with the criminal element and the hopelessly insane, and at least removed the epileptic from a different sort of horror and disgrace. 

Dr. Shanahan's aim was to remove the epileptic from society because they "couldn't adjust to a life in the ordered community" and that holding a job for them was "impossible"--that plus what he saw as the need to protect society from the epileptic's "progressive mental deterioration".   He felt that "the great majority should be committed[to the epileptic colonies] as are the insane", and also to remove them to these places "from a young age", to an "institution for defectives", there separated according to "sex and mental grade". 

Overall, though, it was Shanahan's other aim to provide as "normal" a life for epileptics as could be arrived at, and outside of his trying to save society from them--at a time when the eugenics people were out castrating epileptics--, he was arguing that this method was the best of all possible worlds for people with this disorder.  He does however seem to be totally ignorant of any medical approach to dealing with epilepsy.

By the way, there's a very curious imprint on the back cover of this pamphlet showing who printed it and where.  I cannot recll ever having seen such a small thign, placed so centrally, in such an obvious place. Its obvious and present, yet tiny.  Here it is, before magnification:

And here is what the slug says:

Its just a very curious thing.

 

Dentists and Mushroom Clouds--the Mundane in Planning for the Thermonuclear Post-Apocalypse

ITEM:  Military Medicine , a full issue devoted to "Mass Casualties, Principles Involved in Management",  which were papers delivered at the 62nd annual convention of the Association of Military Surgeons, 1956.9x6 inches, Pp 247-435.  Original printed wrappers.  Very good condition.  $100   Ref: JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1428    Part of a long series on Atomic and Nuclear Weapons History

How can a person--how can I--write about Nuclear Holocaust as being mundane? When it comes to reading how some people mundanely responded to planning for surviving it.

It is a very deep Disturbia into which people fall when writing about the millions of details in accounting for the unaccountable, writing about the medical/physical/psychical consequences of surviving a bomb when dozens might well be detonated at the same time, the millions of details overtaken by billions of other details not mentioned and perhaps not imagined. 

I've collected some wide non sequiturs dealing with the matters of the nuclear apocalypse from a publication called Military Medicine in an article entitled "Mass Casualties, Principles Involved in Management",  which were papers delivered at the 62nd annual convention of the Association of Military Surgeons, 1956.  Sometimes the chapter heading says it all, giving wide pause; and sometimes you have to wade in a little, but you don't need to go very far, or very deep.  Overall the issue of the absolutely overwhelming devastation and the impossibility of dealing with the human consequences of nuclear war do absolutely get written about, but it occurs somewhere inside each contribution, which is front-loaded with pop-iconic understatement and then followed up with vast simplification. 

Then of course there is the official-speak in quietly stating screamingly bad things: "a wide disparity will in all probability exist between patient load and medical resources".  There's so much like that in this publication that it is hard to keep up, like differentiating sands on a beach. 

[I resisted including the section on the use of dentists in the post apocalypse--it was too painful, and I ran out of steam.]

 

 

150 Year Old Paper Lateral Dissection of the Brain

ITEMS: the following original engravings, each 12x9 inches.  Very good condition.  $75/each

ref: JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1363

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These images are brought to us by the Irish-born Quain brothers:  Jones Quain (1796-1865),  an anatomist and professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of London; and Richard Quain (1800-1887), professor of anatomy in 1832 at the University of London, then surgeon at North London Hospital, and president of the Royal College of Surgeons. The illustrations are from a later (ca. 1850's) and smaller printing of their beautiful 1844 work The Anatomy of the Arteries of the Human Body, with its Applications to Pathology and Operative Surgery, in Lithographic Drawings with Practical Commentaries.

The rest of the images are found int he continued reading section:

Antique pre-Dada Ingredients of the Anatomy of the Senses

ITEMS as follows.

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1362

Some of the strangest, occasionally least-of-their-time scientific illustration seems to come in the area of anatomical illustration--for me, anyway.  When taken out of context, some medical illustration looks positively modern, or post modern, as we can see with the following examples. 

The first image is a detail from a series of images by the Irish-born Quain brothers:  Jones Quain (1796-1865),  an anatomist and professor of Anatomy and Physiology at the University of London; and Richard Quain (1800-1887), professor of anatomy in 1832 at the University of London, then surgeon at North London Hospital, and president of the Royal College of Surgeons. The illustrations are from a later and smaller printing of their beautiful 1844 work The Anatomy of the Arteries of the Human Body, with its Applications to Pathology and Operative Surgery, in Lithographic Drawings with Practical Commentaries.  Taken out of context, removed 80 years or so, taken to Germany, and they might be bits and pieces (or entire works for that matter) of a Dadaist exhibition in Berlin in 1925. 

The full image of the image above is from:

TASTE

[Quain Brothers anatomy, London, ca. 1850, 12x9 inches.  $65.00]

SIGHT

[Quain Brothers anatomy, London, ca. 1850, 12x9 inches.  $65.00]

[Quain Brothers anatomy, London, ca. 1850, 12x9 inches.  $65.00]

And this beautiful detail:

[Source unknown, printed ca. 1870, $75.00]

SOUND

[Quain Brothers anatomy, London, ca. 1850, 12x9 inches.  $65.00]

 

TOUCH

This remarkable cross-section of the fingertip.

Which is a detail from:

[Source unknown, printed ca. 1870, $45.00]

SMELL

[Quain Brothers anatomy, London, ca. 1850, 12x9 inches.  $65.00]

HEARING

[Quain Brothers anatomy, London, ca. 1850, 12x9 inches.  $65.00]

Unintentional Dadaist Anatomy: William Rimmer, 1877

ITEMS (as follows): William Rimmer, Artistic Anatomy, Boston, 1877.  Each lithograph 12x16 inches.  Fine condition.  $125/each (Note: owing to size some of the later images scanned not so well; there are no dark spots in the originals.)

ref:  JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1360

 
Looking at old prints sometimes reveals more than just their own history, simple or not:  there are, from time to time, subtle bits of otherness that creeps into the image, if you allow yourself the time to see it.  And sometimes looking at images of the past reveal a little of the future, or the possibility of the future. A great example of this is William Rimmer’s (1816-1879) Art Anatomy, this edition published in 1877 (and about which I wrote earlier in this blog¹).

The work reminds me of at least two touchpoints, one from art, the other literary.  First and foremost, the added elements, the humanist touches and flairs (and I mean Humanist as in the 16th century variety) , the mytholigizing elements, the little designs that are added to the anatomical details

that run throughout the course of the work,  remind me of the work of the Dadaists that would come forty years later.  As will be seen below, there really isn't much necessity for all of the added extras, the fabulous add-ons, that Rimmer incorporates in this work.  This part of the work definitely has an antiquarian flavor to it, the major anatomies of the 16th and even into te 17th century having a pronounced artistic flavor to them.

In a more removed sense, I get a heavy dose of memory of Marcel Proust from the Rimmer images.  In a sense, Rimmer is trying to affect change, an instability, into the most common and stable presentations in art, human anatomy.  There is a strong his history of presenting anatomy in an artistic format--Vesalius is one famous example--where skeletons are posed reading books, or holding their skin or contemplating  a(nother) skull--but not so much past the late 17th century.  Though very few of the "decorated" anatomies have ever taken their artistic license quote so fabulously as Rimmer.  And Proust I think is a Great Destabilizer--he works very hard to push the center of gravity away from where it should be on just about everything.  He drags himself to the proposition at hand, to the memory, to the situation, and though all of his great personal destabilizers--his allegeries, his allegeries to the things that he loves, his allergies to his allergies, his vast catalog of physical complaints, his pale melancholia, his fits, his spectacular memory, his ability to see differently, and on and on, all seemed to coalescence into a colossal ability to see even the smallest detail outside of its small details.  Perhaps this is a stretch, but that is the literary sense-impression I have from Rimmer.

For some reason I never included any of the images available for sale in my blog bookstore--though now I have.