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The principal proponent of Cartesianism, Malebranche studied philosophy at the Collège de la Marche and theology at the Sorbonne; in 1660 he joined the congregation of the Oratory, becoming a priest in 1664. He is most famous for his 1674 On the Search for Truth. His last book, this is his major statement on free will and physical determinism.
One of the most influential 18th century British contributions to social & economic thought, the first edition of which is very rare. Mandeville strongly favored free trade and the production of luxuries, but opposed educating the poor on the grounds that knowledge multiplies our desires without providing the means for fulfilling them. Adam Smith was much influenced by Mandeville.
The "Vindication" first appeared in the 1724 third edition. Mandeville's famous book originated in a 433-line poem published as a pamphlet in 1705, "The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turn'd Honest," which made the central argument of the Fable that selfishness and private vices resulted in public virtues, a direct prefiguration of Adam Smith's laissez-faire economics. Mandeville's defense of the numerous attacks against his pamphlet led to his vastly expanding his original poem into a full-scale book, the 1714 Fable of the Bees.One of the most influential 18th century British contributions to social & economic thought and a direct precursor of the liberal economic tradition, the first edition of which is very rare. Though strongly favoring free trade and the production of luxuries, Mandeville opposed educating the poor on the grounds that knowledge multiplies our desires without providing the means for fulfilling them. Adam Smith was much influenced by Mandeville.
Hunter & Macalpine p. 296. The first book on minor mental maladies written for patients rather than physicians. Mandeville describes his own bout with melancholy when he developed the delusion that he had syphilis.
Not in OCLC; not in Diethelm's Medical Dissertations of Psychiatric Interest Printed Before 1750. Dissertation submitted to the University of Paris Faculty of Medicine, taken under Paulo-Jacobo Maloüin.
The third edition adds an index. Contains 25 chapters covering theology; ethics; christianity, judaism, mahometism, paganism, ; mythology; grammar & language; rhetoric & oratory; ontology; poetry, criticism; geography; chronology; history; physiology; botany; anatomy; pharmacy; medicine; polity & economics; jurisprudence; heraldry; mathematics & science.
GM 1647. "The outstanding textbook of the time. Mauriceau, leading obstetrician of his day, introduced the practice of delivering his patients in bed instead of in the obstetrical chair. It was to Mauriceau that Chamberlen attempted to sell the secret of his forceps."
GM 2071. Lettsome was a famous Quaker physician and philanthropist who practised in London during the time of George III. Pages 151-165 of his paper constitute the first description of alcoholism as a medical disease. The paper begins on page 128.
OCLC records no copies of the Latin edition earlier than this third edition for which six locations are cited: Harvard, Dartmouth, Drexel, Middlebury College, Nat Lib of Scotland, and Oxford. Brunet (5th ed.) III, 1620; Graesse IV, 485 (neither citing an edition earlier than the 1716). Originally delivered as lectures and apparently first published in 1713, though we can find no record of the existence of a 1713 edition. Translated into German in 1714 as Zwei Reden von der charlataneria. Both this third & the 1726 fourth edition contain the objections to Mencken's text expressed in letters by Christoph August Heumann (1681-1763) [using the pseudonym Sebastianus Stadelius]. Rector at Leipzig, Heumann was a notable and many-faceted scholar, philosopher, and theologian who edited the first philosophical journal, Acta philosophorum from 1711 to 1726.An important book that attacked medical quacks and the pseudolearned in mathematics, philosophy, and other erudite fields. Mencken translated the common German term "Scharlatan" into Latin since, as he wrote, there was no appropriate Latin word for the idea. The German word, as well as the English "charlatan," derives from "Cerretani," the inhabitants of the Italian town of Cerreto, whose tramps and vagrants in the Middle Ages used trickery to relieve the guileless of their money. Mencken extended the notion of charlatanry to the learned professions. Translated into English in 1937 with introduction and notes by H. L. Mencken (who was not related to Johann).
Wozniak Mind & Body #19; Crabtree #10. Tinterow (1970) p. 582, GM 4992.1, Osler 3397, Walleriana 17347; PMM 225. The Ur-text for animal magnetism and hypnotism and the foundation document for what became much later psychotherapy and dynamic psychiatry. Mesmer, of course, thought he had discovered a universal physical fluid; it was his follower Puységur who first conceived of animal magnetism in psychological terms.
Howes M653 (no date assigned); Evans 19803; not in Sabin (though other editions are); OCLC entry 19980811. Barbier & Quérard's Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes cite Chamfort as the second author. Pages 1-45 in substance reprint (translated back from French) the 1783 pamphlet Considerations on the Society or Order of Cincinnati, which was signed "Cassius" but written by Aedanus Burke (1743-1802), judge of the South Carolina State circuit court. Burke argued that the Order of Cincinnatus, a Masonic organization limited to officers of the American Revolution and their eldest male descendants, threatened to establish an uncontrollable hereditary aristocracy that endangered the constitution. Very much agreeing with Burke's thesis, Mirabeau recast Burke's text into his own oratorical French, adding a postscript and numerous notes. Pages 73-82 contain "Circular letter, addressed to the state societies of the Cincinnati by the general meeting convened at Philadelphia on the 3d of May 1784, and signed by General Washington, as president of the order", with notes by the authors, who praise Washington highly for abolishing hereditary succession in the society.
- A very complicated text. Considérations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus, ou Imitation d'un pamphlet anglo-américain first appeared in 1784, published in London by J. Johnson. It contained a long "lettre" by Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781), the French Minister of Finance. Turgot's letter on the constitutions of America had first appeared (in French) appended to the 1784 pamphlet titled Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution, and the Means of Making It a Benefit to the World by Richard Price (1723-1791), published in London and reprinted the same year in Boston. Later in 1784, Johnson published an expanded version, with a full translation of Price's pamphlet into French, with added notes by Guy-Jean-Baptiste Target (1733-1806), a French lawyer.
- Though one must always view sceptically 18th century French titles with London imprints, in this case the imprint is probably real, since Mirabeau was living in London at the time, and since Johnson also published in 1785 Samuel Romilly's English translation of the expanded version, albeit with Price's text abstracted. Johnson reprinted the expanded version in 1788. The 1785 American version that we have, reduces Turgot's commentary to most of page 42 (it occupied 20 pages in Price's pamphlet), and omits completely both Price's text and Target's commentary. This was the first work Mirabeau published using his name and "is a good specimen of his method" [11th Britannica]. He went on to play a significant role in the early days of the French Revolution, attempting unsuccessfully to transform the French government into a Constitutional Monarchy.
Disquisition by a Catholic priest on various forms of profane love with sections on adultery, bigamy, concupiscence, jealousy, etc.
Not in OCLC.
PMM 197; Kress 5057. The great Enlightenment synthesis of 18th century thought about law, history, government, and individual rights in which Montesquieue formulated the philosophical substrucutre of democracy. Comte and Durkheim viewed Montesquieu as the most important precursor of sociology, while Ernst Cassirer and Franz Neumann saw him as the founder of ideal-type analysis, and Sir Frederick Pollock as the father of modern historical research and of a comparative theory of politics and law based on observation of actual systems.
Wing M2679. A late book by this important Cambridge Platonist. As the title suggests, a strident argument against astrology. Includes the four chapters from Butler's book that occasioned More's refutation.
The most important statement of his metaphysical views by this great Cambridge Platonist. Norris here considerably modifies his Platonism in the direction of Cartesian dualism, adopting even the Cartesian doctrine of animal mechanism.
Hirsch IV, p. 389. An early monograph on rabies by a distinguished Irish physician who was Edmund Burke's father-in-law, a member of the Literary Club and also (later) a Fellow of the Royal Society. Apparently Nugent's only book, this was translated into French in 1754.
OCLC Worldcat locates 7 copies, of which only two are in North America (at NLM and the Univ of Maryland Health Sciences Library). University of Edinburgh medical dissertation on nervous fever.
Oldfield studied at Lincoln College, Oxford, but secured his DD from Edinburgh University in 1709. A friend of both Locke & Newton, Oldfield published a number of sermons; his most important work, though, is this, his only book, "Oldfield draws largely on the epistemologies of Bacon and Locke, defining reason theoretically as well as practically. Much of the work is given over to means and ways of improving reason as a faculty. For the most part, Oldfield recapitulates seventeenth-century notions of mind, knowing, logic and morality …" [Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers 2: 618].
Caillet 8525. Pernety was a Benedictine Monk of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, Abbot of Burgel in Thuringia, and Librarian for Frederick the Great.
Diethelm #742. Not in the Wellcome Catalog or OCLC. Basle medical thesis. Pestalozzi was a student of Felix Platter's.
Wellcome I 4972; NLM Catalog of 17th Century Books #8881. A rare and important early astrological treatise.
Influenced by Locke and Condillac, Pinel co-ordinated observation and experiment in his nosological system. "As a nosologist, Pinel wanted to take advantage of the progress made in his own days by the natural sciences, physics, chemistry, and botany … In brief, he wanted medicine to become a branch of natural history. [Thus] it was he, the the alienist, who anticipated the major role we ascribe today to the basic sciences in our curriculum and training." [Riese, The Legacy of Philippe Pinel. NY: 1969]."A new advance [in nosology], however, began to take place, especially in France, at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and this was possible through the important additions to knowledge from a deep study of pathological anatomy. A pioneer in this advance was Philippe Pinel (1755-1826) in his Nosograpie philosophique (1802). His classification of inflammations (phlegmasiae) was particularly important. He recognized five orders of phlegmasiae according as they affected 1) the skin, 2) the mucous membranes, 3) the serous membranes, 4) the cellular tissue and parenchymatous organs; 5) the muscular, fibrous, or synovial tissue" [Bulloch's History of Bacteriology, pp. 155-156; also see p. 390].
Not in NUC or any of the standard histories of philosophy. Presumably by an obscure (to say the least) Austrian philosopher.
Wellcome I, 5143. OCLC locates copies at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Illinois, and at the State Library in Berlin. Pages 89-106 consist of "Assertiones Caroli Montecuccoli, in comitis provincialibus fratrum Eremitarum sancti Augustini Carpi celebratis, publice disputatae, anno 1606". Not present (as in the Wellcome copy) is Francesco Montecuccoli's 80 page Italian translation, which was separately printed and bound in after this Latin translation.
The vapeurs was the neurosis of 18th century society women. "There were actually two fashionable neuroses during the second half of the eighteenth century: One, hypochondriasis, affected distinguished gentlemen and consisted of fits of depression and irritability. The other was vapeurs, the neurosis of distinguished ladies, who fainted and had varied sorts of nervous fits. These neuroses were described in detail in treatises that have been classics, such as the Treatise on Vapeurs by Joseph Raulin and that by Pierre Pomme" [Ellenberger p.187].
This edition not in Wellcome or OCLC (though a 1602 Neapolitan edition is in both). Diamond 23.5; Norman Catalog 1723 (1586 edition); GM 150; Heirs of Hippocrates 370; Osler 3714; Cushing P346. Preceded by the 1586 and 1593 editions.The ancient "science" of character-reading from physiognomy saw its Renaissance revival in della Porta's widely influential book — one of the first such manuals to be illustrated —, which itself was the ultimate foundation of Lavater's revival of the idea in the late 18th century. As so often, Sol Diamond got its importance exactly right, for the notions of causal dependence of behavior on the body and its expressive modes as well as of the possibility of methodically correlating the two were concepts necessary for the later emergence of clinical psychology and psychiatry.
The ancient "science" of character-reading from physiognomy saw its Renaissance revival in della Porta's widely influential book — one of the first such manuals to be illustrated —, which itself was the ultimate foundation of Lavater's revival of the idea in the late 18th century. As so often, Sol Diamond got its importance exactly right, for the notions of causal dependence of behavior on the body and its expressive modes as well as of the possibility of methodically correlating the two were concepts necessary for the later emergence of clinical psychology and psychiatry. Porta himself was a major figure in the emergence of natural science, though in typical Renaissance fashion he combined elements of credulity with recognition of the importance of experiment and experiential confirmation of preconceived theories.
DSB XI: 95-98; Wing P2982; Wheeler Gift Catalogue 64b; Norman Catalog 1726; Wellcome IV, p. 418; Thorndike, History of Magic & Experimental Science, VI: 418-422. Porta's first and best-known work and the basis for his reputation originally appeared in Latin in 1558 in four books, then was vastly expanded into the 20 books of the 1589 edition, of which this is the English translation. As M. Howard Rienstra noted in the DSB, Porta's book displays "that unique combination of curiosity and credulity common in the late Renaissance." In the enlarged 1589 edition, though, "Natural magic is no longer quite so pretentiously conceived as in the first edition. It presumes an orderly and rational universe into which the magician-scientist has insights that are revealed to him because of his virtue and his study. … The 1589 edition represents in part the work, discussions, and experiments that took place in Porta's academy [i.e., the Accademia dei Segreti, sometime before 1580]—hence the emphasis on experimentation and application in his definition of natural magic."Porta's empirical investigations into magnetism and optics were especially important. "Porta was the first to add a concave lens to the aperture of the camera obscura, and his comparison of the camera lens to the pupil of the eye provided an easily understood demonstration that the source of visual images lay outside the eye" [Norman catalog].
See Hirsch IV: 647. Quarin became director of the Viennese General Hospital; according to Hirsch he was so respected that his advice was widely sought.
Wellcome IV p. 455. First combined edition with added material of Quesnay's two books on blood-letting, originally published in 1731 and 1736. A distinguished French surgeon and advocate for surgeons at a time when they were in very low repute in France and constantly quarreling with physicians, Quesnay is much better known for founding the Physiocrat theory in economics, though he did not begin writing on economic and agricultural topics until 1756.
The additional surname of Saint-Etienne resulted from ownership of a smal property near Nimes, where Rabout was born. "Having gained a great reputatin by his Histoire primitive de la Grèce, he was elected deputy to the States General in 17889 by the third estate of the bailliage of Nimes. In the Constituent Assembly he worked on the framing of the constitution, spoke against the establishment of the repubic, which he considered ridiculous, and voted for the suspensive veto, as likely to strengthen the position of the crown. In the Convention he sat among the Girondists, opposed the trial of Louis XVI, was a member of the commission of twelve, and was proscribed with his party. He remained in hiding for some time, but was ultimately discovered and guillotined on the 5th of December 1793" [11th edition Encyclopedia Britannica].
Jessop page 165.
Reid's last philosophical work in which he addressed the issues of will, motivation, and morality, taking considerable care to refute Hume's positions. "Reid takes Hume to be a complete emotivist who reduces the moral value of actions to the moral value of motives, and the latter to a commonality of feeling engendered through sympathy. Bu t, according to Reid, the goodness of an action does not depend on the goodness of the motive" [Dictionary of Eighteenth Century British Philosophers 2: 745].
Jessop p. 165. Reid's second book, 21 years after his pathbreaking 1764 Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Whereas his first book was primarily epistemological, this second book extends his thinking to topics of memory, abstraction, judgment, reasoning, and taste.Founder of the Scottish "Common Sense" school, Reid greatly influenced the direction in which 19th century Anglo-American psychology developed. Faculty psychology and phrenology both derive from this book and its companion essay on the active powers of the intellect, though Reid's divisions themselves derive from Wolff.
Jessop page 164.
Reid's first and most important book, primarily written to refute David Hume, presents the classic argument for direct realism, that is, for the epistemological theory that our senses reveal the world as it is without mediation. For Reid ordinary language is closely connected with common sense and mirrors our everyday thinking. Reid's work was massively influential, though quite a bit of its influence lay far in the future. His ideas, especially through his followers Stewart and Hamilton, dominated American psychology and philosophy throughout most of the 19th century. His connecting ordinary language with common sense directly influenced G. E. Moore and J. L. Austin in the 20th century, while C. S. Peirce, at least before his turn to a view more akin to idealism in the late 1890s, shared Reid's esteem for direct experience, which became an important plank in the platform of pragmatism.
Enlarged editions appeared in 1762 and 1773, and posthumous editions in 1790 and 1798.
- Diamond 15.8: "Reimarus, a Deist, presented a theory of instinct from the standpoint of 'natural theology' … the book was soon translated into French [and Dutch] and exercised great influence. … German writers especially regard this book as the beginning of modern instinct theory."
- Wilm pp. 94-118: "Reimarus not only anticipated much of the Naturphilosophie of post-Kantian philosopphy in Germany, … but forecast one of the most influential trends in modern biological psychology, which sees in instinct a non-acquired character (anti-Lamarckian)" [p. 95].
- Reimarus, Professor of Oriental Languages at the Hamburg Gymnasium, made the first sustained nonanthropomorphic studies of animal behavior. He "undertook a minute analysis of instincts in different species [and] wished to demonstrate that neither the mechanists nor the sensationalists could give them a proper account. Against the Cartesians, especially La Mettrie and Buffon, he offered examples of animals whose behavior could not result simply from fixed corporeal structures: for instance, young calves, rams, and goats attempted to butt with horns that had yet to sprout — which showed that the soul, not anatomy, guided the animal in the use of its organs. Against Condillac, Guer, and other sensationalists — who believed instincts really to be learned habits — Reimarus produced many instances of behavior stereotyped in species, especially behavior that appeared immediately after birth. … Reimarus produced the challenge that later biological theorists had to meet: the explanation of behavior that was unlearned and uniform in a species" [Richards Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior, pp. 520-521].
STC 20945; DNB XVI: 933; Lowndes Vol IV, p. 2078 (1869 edition). Little is known about Reynolds, said by the DNB to be a native of Exeter who traveled in France on business. Book I first appeared in 1621, with Books II & III appearing in 1621 and 1622. All six were first published together in 1635, with the edition we have apparently being the second complete edition. It was republished a number of times through the early 18th century with Pordage's 1679 edition being especially noteworthy as adding a section on the revenge of adultery. All the early editions are rare.
The foundation text for modern autobiography and the first to emphasize the importance of childhood in the development of adult mind and personality. Originally published in French posthumously, with the first part appearing in 1782 and the second part in 1789.
Blake p. 398. A famous late-Renaissance pediatric poem, first published in Latin in 1584 and first translated into French in 1698 by Guillaume de Luynes as La maniere de nourrir les enfans a la mammelle. First translated into English in 1718 and issued as part of the second English edition of Quillet's Callipaediae. Tytler's edition, the first separate edition in English, includes the 108 page biography by Michel & Niceron and numerous erudite medical and historical notes added by Tytler. A physician of classical bent, Tytler had earlier translated Callimachus.
Wing S430. OCLC locates 9 copies but the collation given is for a defective copy lacking A2 and Ll8 and without the portrait. Salmon was an English physician and astrologer who published many works, notable for their emphasis on practice with patients rather than theory. Heirs to Hippocrates lists three of his books (654-656) and Hunter & Macalpine anthologize his Iatrica (pp. 258-261).
Book I: Diagnosticks; II: Prognostica; III: Therapeutica; IV: Anatomica.
"Before out-patient rooms were established, irregular practitioners frequently lived near the gates of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and obtained patients from those to whom admission or attendance could not be granted in the hospital. Salmon set up in this capacity near the Smithfield gate of St. Bartholomew's, treated all diseases, sold special prescriptions of his own, and professed alchemy. While resident in Smithfield he published in 1671 'Synopis Medicinae, or a Compend of Astrological, Galenical, and Chymical Physic,' in three books" [DNB 17: p. 698]. Hunter & Macalpine write about Iatrica, another of Salmon's many books, "Salmon was a busy practitioner with a ready pen who left extensive accounts of his patients and how he treated them" [p. 258]. In the present work as well Salmon worries little about theory, instead devoting his text entirely to his actual treatment practices with patients. Chapter 29 (Of Diseases of the Upper Ventricle) deals mostly with neurological and psychiatric disorders (epilepsy, vertigo, apoplexy, convulsion, palsy, incubus, melancholy, distemper of the brain, delirium), though it also deals with disorders of the eyes, years, and teeth.
Though the title-page calls for 50 copper plates, there were actually 51, including the original frontis to the first volume (here replaced with plate 7). The original German edition had 70 plates, designed and engraved by Chodowiecki. 49 were redrawn by William Blake for the English translation with number 20 being somewhat altered from the original. Blake added two more of his own design: 27 & 28.
OCLC locates 5 copies: Univ Otago; Georgetown; Univ of Illinois; Harvard; Hopkins. Sanfelice was a Neapolitan Franciscan monk who first published his account of the history and geography of Campania in 1562, with several later editions published as De situ origine Campaniae. This final edition in Latin includes Sanfelice's poems and a brief biography by Urso. An Italian translation appeared in 1796.
OCLC locates only one copy, at Duke. Rare medical dissertation on diabetes mellitus, with Bernhardo Albino presiding.
Scribanus was a Belgian Jesuit who wrote on theological and medical topics. We have seen a listing for a 1618 Antwerp edition, but have been unable to determine whether it really exists. This is the earliest edition in OCLC, which records only two copies: Harvard & Wellcome.
Not in Crabtree (but see #111 & 112 for Servan's two 1784 tracts). OCLC locates copies only at Yale, Countway, NLM, Duke, and Wellcome. A continuaton of Servan's defense of Mesmer. A distinguished French lawyer and correspondant of Voltaire and d'Alembert, Servan—having been cured by a mesmerist after traditional medicine had failed him—had published in 1784 two pamphlets defending Mesmer after the negative conclusions of the two Royal Commission reports. The present work includes letters on mesmerism by La Condamine and J[oseph] L[ouis] P[ilcher] Grandchamp.
Blake p. 415. Séze was at the University of Montpellier.
Howes S368; Kress 4066. Sabin 80047. Shebbeare criticizes the failure to stop French encroachments on the Ohio.
Diamond 15.9 & 19.8 (instincts & dreams). Wood 1931 p. 570. Smellie is best known for initiating and writing much of the text for the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1771). In this, his last book, the second volume of which appeared posthumously, Smellie takes a surpisingly psychological approach to natural history — indeed the book more closely approximates a contribution to comparative psychology than to zoology, as a sampling of its chapter titles indicates: "Of Puberty", "Of Love", "Of the Hostilities of Animals", "Of the Artifices of Animals", "Of the Society of Animals", "Of the Principles of Imitation in Animals.".
Laehr I p. 144; Wellcome I #5991. OCLC locates 3 copies: NLM and 2 at Yale.
Sadoff Catalog page 10. FRP and Physician Extraordinary to His Majesty, Smyth published this account and another in 1796 of his use of nitrous oxide for combatting contagion. Though Johnstone and Guyton de Morveau contested priority in the use of acid vapor for this purpose, the College of Physicians judged Smyth the discoverer and Parliament awarded him £5000 in 1802 in recognition of his achievement.
PMM 153; Norman Catalog 1988; Diamond Roots of Psychology 1.6 Contains the first editions of the Ethics, the Tractatus politicus, Epistolae, and Compendium grammatices linguae hebraeae. "Spinoza points to the need for honest, unprejudiced evaluation of human nature, and in this pursuit he applies the 'geometric method' of Descartes more ruthlessley than Descartes ever did. The modernity of Spinoza's views is such that in 1826 Johannes Müller declared that the treatment of the passions in Spinoza's Ethics is a model of the method to be pursued in developing a scientific physiological psychology" [Diamond 1.6].One of the great books in both philosophy and psychology, the Ethics is perhaps the most subtle and complex psychological analysis of the emotions from the pen of a philosopher. The Ethics remarkably prefigures Freud in its emphases on conatus as the Ursprung for desire and action and on confused ideas by which men explain their actions while remaining ignorant of the true causes for their motives. In fine, the Ethics presents the first dynamic psychological system.
The first history of the Royal Society, commissioned by the Society's council, and the work by which Sprat is chiefly known.
The final, most complete, and best edition. Volume 1 first appeared in 1655; a 3rd volume appeared in 1660 and a 4th in 1662 entitled The History of Chaldaick Philosophy; republished in one volume in 1687; 3rd edition 1700; 4th edition 1743 with a memoir of the author. Partly translated into French in 1660; volumes 1-3 of the first edition were translated into Latin with additions by Godfrey Olearius (Leipzig, 1711).The first history of philosophy in English (and the second in any language after Georg Horn's Historiae philosophice de origine, Leiden, 1655), Stanley's doxographical history of Greek philosophy is very much based on Diogenes Laertius while including material from other sources.
In 1785 Stewart succeeded Adam Ferguson to the chair of moral philosophy in Edinburgh, where his lectures became a cultural institution. In this, his first book, he began the exposition of his version of Reid's common sense philosophy that he completed in 1814 with publication of the the third volume of the Elements. Stewart had the misfortune to publish his book "just as the French Revolution was seen to turn nasty. He was strongly attacked as an ally of the sensationalist, materialist, irreligious philosophy supposedly propagated by thinkers such as Condorcet which was thought to lie behind the destruction of the traditional social order in France as well as threatening that at home" [Yolton et al, Dictionary of Eighteenth-Century British Philosophers 2: 831].
Blake p. 442. The last separate edition. The editor, Salmon, was an English physician and astrologer who published many works, notable for their emphasis on practice with patients rather than theory. Heirs to Hippocrates lists three of his books (654-656) and Hunter & Macalpine anthologize his Iatrica (pp. 258-261).
Hunter & Macalpine p. 113; STC 23584.
The first book in English on suicide. "The orthodoxy of Lifes Preservative, rather than its originality, is the chief reason why it is an important work in the history of attitudes to suicide. It is absolutely representative of the prevailing opinion of its day. Furthermore, it fused theological discourse, moral condemnation and psychological insight in a way that none of the shorter works by divines and medical writers had. To understand Lifes Preservative is to grasp precisely what suicide meant to pious Englishmen in the early seventeenth century, to see something of the now forgotten attitude of mind that interpreted behaviour and emotion in terms both of natural and supernatural forces, psychological motivations and religious meanings" [Michael MacDonald, page x of his introduction to the facsimile reprint issued by Routledge, London, 1988].
Howes S1190; Sabin 94124. Professor of Modern History at Cambridge, Symonds here attempts to refute William Barron's thesis that taxes on the American colonies were justified by the historical precedent that the Greeks, Romans, and Carthaginians had taxed their colonies.
Brunet (5th ed.: V, 611) called this very rare and noted that it was a separate, very small printing of material later included in the third volume of the works of Muret, published in 1741 with the same imprint.Publilius Syrus (note: not "Publius") came to Rome in the first century BCE as a slave, presumably from Antioch, secured his manumission, and became known for his latinized versions of the mime. His improvisations were mostly recorded only in actors's copies. In the first century CE "it was realized that, whatever the harm wrought by the immorality of mimes, the apothegms uttered by various dramatic personages might well be selected and alphabetically arranged to inculcate on schoolboys a proverbial wisdom founded on human experience. … The great textual difficulty is to disengage truly Publilian sententiae from accretions due to paraphrases of genuine verses, or insertions of Senecan and pseudo-Senecan ideas …" [Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 748].
Chapter 6, pages 158-166 deal with scruple. "A scruple as Taylor defined it is in psychiatric terminology today called an irrational fear or obsessional phobia. He recognized that the patient 'knows not what or why' he fears, in other words that his anxiety is unconsciously determined. He also made the valid observation that the mood of the obsessional is fundamentally sad even though he does not appear so, because an obsessive-compulsive neurosis is a means of warding off expected or dreaded evil or punishment. In the account of William Oseney [quoted later], the illness began with overscrupulosity in religious matters, sometimes an early symptom of impending mental breakdown with which priests are more familiar than psychiatrists. This typical case history shows how obsessions may spread to rule the patient's life and lead to psychotic breakdown—in his case followed by recovery" [Hunter & Macalpine p. 163].
Crabtree 1988 #116; Caillet #10676; Norman Catalog M150.
An important book. Thouret's thorough study was the first to show that Mesmer's discoveries had in fact all already been stated by other authors. Most importantly, he showed the derivation of Mesmer's work from the English physician, Richard Mead. A member of the Royal Society of Medicine of Paris, Thouret was a leading opponent of Mesmer's theories. "Although Thouret had earlier displayed a generally positive attitude towards Mesmer's work, … he had become one of the leading critics of animal magnetism, which he rejected as an illusion. … [Thouret here showed] that theories similar to Mesmer's had been held by Paracelsus, Kircher, and Fludd, among others. Thouret's erudite history of Mesmer's predecessors had an effect opposite to what he intended: by giving mesmeric thought a legitimate past, it tended to affirm the convictions of adherents of animal magnetism" [Norman Catalog].
Blake p. 453.
Temkin. The Falling Sickness. p. 229-31; McHenry p. 136; Blake 1979 p. 454. Issued as the first part of the third volume of his collected works on nervous diseases, but the first volume published. "Tissot collected material for many years for his important treatise on nervous diseaes. His work is especially important because of his numerous condensations of previous literature and his precise references to many writers otherwise forgotten or overlooked. One of the most significant portions of his work is his monograph on epilepsy . . . Overall, Tissot's importance is due to his clear differentiation between diseases of the nervous systme and the pathology of other body systems, w hich laid the foundation for modern neurology" [Heirs of Hippocrates #980 [the complete Traité, 1778-1780 edition]."Tissot's Treatise on Epilepsy, published in 1770, is the first book on this subject to show all the characteristics of Enlightenment in medicine. Written in the French vernacular, it is at once learned, scientific, and readable. … Tissot is to be found on the side of those opposing old beliefs for which no adequate reason could be given" [Temkin. The Falling Sickness. p. 229].
Blake p. 454. So far as we can determine, this is the only edition.
Despite Tooke's curious notion that each word had a single and unchangeable meaning, a seminal and widely influential philological work.Born John Horne, Horne Tooke added in 1782 to his own name the last name of his benefactor William Tooke. His Epea Pteroenta was an early attempt to analyze language scientifically. The 1798 second edition of the first volume must have been sold with the 1805 first edition of volume two, since this is how the set is commonly found.
OCLC records only 3 copies: 2 in France and NLM. Torre was professor and prefect of public gardens at Padua. A natural-historical disquisition on creatures of the air and water and their effect on human health and well being. Contains discussions of Pliny and Aristotle.
Famed for his brilliantly constructed military fortifications and France's greatest military engineer, Vauban is eqally famous as an economic theorist. In this, his last book, published without licence anonymously and with no date or place of publication, Vauban argued for an extensive reform of the French system of taxation, proposing that all current taxes be scrapped, to be replaced by a 10% tax to be paid by all, albeit with graduated abatements for the less well off down to a minimum of 3.3%.
GM #388 (1693 edition); Blake p. 472; Heirs of Hippocrates #663 (1705 edition); Choulant p. 248; Waller 9880; Hirsch V, 732. The standard period anatomical textbook, oft re-issued, which, according to Choulant, replaced Bertholin's textbook. The enlarged and revised 1710 edition is much preferred.Verheyen went to Louvain in 1675 to study theology, but after the amputation of a foot studied medicine at Louvain and Leyden instead, obtaining his medical degree from the University of Louvain in 1683. There he became professor of anatomy in 1689, and of surgery in 1693. See Choulant pp. 248-49.
STC 21363. The first three editions all have identical pagination, but the 1628 and this 1634 edition omit two plates that are in the 1605 edition. Lowndes notes that the engravings of the 1605 edition are superior to those in the later editions. The 1653 fourth edition (London: printed by T. Newcomb for Joseph Kirton) was the first to be completely reset, with a sixth edition appearing in 1673.An English-born Catholic, originally named Richard Rowlands, Verstegen assumed his original Dutch family name after he moved to Antwerp, where he both wrote and published books, many illustrated with his own copper engravings (as this probably was). An Antiquary and an early student of Anglo-Saxon, his most important book is his Restitution of Decayed Intelligence with much material on early British history, especially the Anglo-Saxons. Contains an essay on the formation of Anglo-Saxon; a glossary (pages 207-240); chapters on the etymologies of Saxon proper names, surnames, and titles. The final section (333-340) lists and defines words of contempt, many of which unsurprisingly have had quite a long and useful life. Crone, knave, rascall, ribald, shrew, and thief have made it to our time nearly unchanged, while hoor hadn't yet acquired its 'w.' Baud seems to survive only as "bawdy" (bauds now requiring a different kind of electricity), while lotel and lourdaine didn't make the cut. Pages 85-87 contain the first English printed version of the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin (well, it was first in 1605 anyway).
The Renaissance Scottish Catholic humanist and philosopher Volusene published in Lyon in 1543 "the work on which his fame rests [this book] . . . In form this work is an imaginary conversation held in a garden on the heights of Fourvières overlooking Lyons, between the author and two friends. In substance it reminds one of 'The Consolation of Philosophy' of Boethius. Without being commonplace, it is full of sense, and at once reasonable and Christian. It seems to have had considerable popularity, and brought to its author well-deserved fame" [DNB XX: 389-90]. Subsequent editions were issued in 1637, 1642, 1707, and this last edition in 1751. The editions of 1637, 1707, and 1751 are all prefixed by a brief anonymous life, which the DNB informs us was actually written by Thomas Wilson, who also called himself "Volusenus." Volusene—whose birth name may have been "Wilson," "Wolson," or "Wolsey"—signed his name in his English letters "Volusene" or "Volusenus." Volusene's philosophy is Christian and biblical rather than classical or scholastic. He takes a fresh and independent view of Christian ethics, and he ultimately reaches a doctrine as to the witness of the Spirit and the assurance of grace which breaks with the traditional Christianity of his time and is based on ethical motives akin to those of the German Reformers" [Britannica 11th edition, article on Volusenus].
Blake p. 483.
GM 1116; Norman Catalog 2228; Osler 4219 (all 3 the 1st edition); Heirs of Hippocrates 504 & Cushing W146 (both the 1659 edition); Waller 10265. The foundation text for modern endocrinology in which Wharton "gave the first thorough account of the glands of the human body, which Wharton classified as excretory, reductive, and nutrient. He differentiated the viscera from the glands and explained their relationship. … He described the duct of the submaxillary salivary gland (Wharton's Duct)" [and] described the thyroid more accurately than his predecessors, naming it" [GM-5 1116].
GM 4841; Heirs of Hippocrates 923 (both citing the 1765 first edition).
"Scotland's first 'neurologist' and the first after Thomas Willis to make fundamental contributions to the knowledge of the central nervous system and its functions … Whytt attempted to apply his neurophysiological findings clinically to bring order into the various diseases grouped haphazardly as 'nervous, hypochondriac or hysteric'" [Hunter & Macalpine]. "Whytt, a pupil of Monro primus and predecessor of William Cullen in the chair of medicine at Edinburgh, was one of the foremost physicians of the eighteenth century because of his contributions to clinical medicine and particularly to the understanding of reflex action" [Heirs of Hippocrates]. Whytt here discusses the significance of emotions in the pathogenesis of nervousness, hypochondria, and hysteria.
Along with his 1732 Psychologia Empirica one of the most important 18th century psychological texts. Wolff's distinction between deductive (rational) and empirical psychology (which he named) has held to this day. Wolff construed psychology as part of metaphysics, distinguishing between rational and empirical psychology (which field he named) according to their methods: the former being deductive while the latter is based on observation. He adopted a sophisticated psychophysical parallelism virtually indistinguishable from materialism (which his critics were quick to note). Though a systematist and in no sense an experimentalist, Wolff's emphasis on the importance of observation of body events encouraged the experimental psychological tradition. It was Wolff who introduced the term 'Begriff' (concept) into German philosophy.
The Psychologia Empirica is the first use of the term 'empirical psychology.' Basing his ideas on Leibniz, Wolff construed psychology as part of metaphysics, and distinguished between rational and empirical psychology (which field he named) according to their methods: the former being deductive while the latter is based on observation. He adopted a sophisticated psychophysical parallelism virtually indistinguishable from materialism (which his critics were quick to note). Though a systematist and in no sense an experimentalist, Wolff's emphasis on the importance of observation of body events encouraged the experimental psychological tradition. It was Wolff who introduced the term 'Begriff' (concept) into German philosophy.
The first use of the term 'empirical psychology.' Wolff here introduces the distinction which has held ever since between rational and empirical psychology. Along with his 1734 Psychologia Rationalis, one of the most important 18th century psychological texts.
Originally printed in 1722 with many errors and only a few copies distributed without the author's knowledge; the 1724 is the first published edition, with the errors corrected and a few minor additions.A very influential book in its day with eight editions (the last being 1759). See Robert Burns' trenchant discussion of Wollaston in The Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers Vol. 2, pp. 907-911, from which my account is taken. Wollaston's reputation rests entirely on this book published near the end of his life, in which he tried to found morality on reason, construing actions as equivalent to and implying propositions. Burns argues that though not a Deist, Wollaston nevertheless definitely had a peculiar attitude toward Christianity, since almost all his (many) references are to classical and Jewish authors, the latest Christian author cited being Augustine. "Wollaston virtually amalgamates the terms religion, morality, happiness, truth and reason …" [Burns].
Originally printed in 1722 with many errors and only a few copies distributed without the author's knowledge; first published edition 1724 with the errors corrected; 3rd edition 1725 (typeset by Ben Franklin) with added footnoted references to classical and Rabbinical authors.
Not in Blake or OCLC. Medical dissertation submitted to Gerard de Vries at Utrecht.
OCLC locates copies at NLM, Univ of Newcstle, Wellcome, Children's Hospital of Phila, and College of Physicians of Phila. University of Edinburgh medical dissertation.
A key book in the deist controversy.
- An important English deist, born at Northampton, entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1685, studied theology, took orders and was make a fellow of the college. After studying Origen, he came to believe in the importance of an allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and advocated its use in the defence of Christianity both in his sermons and in his first book, The Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion against the jews and Gentiles Revived (1705). He then published nothing for years; nonetheless the publication in 1720-1721 of letters and pamphlets that advocated his ideas and openly challenged the clergy to refute them got him in trouble. He lost his fellowship and from 1721 lived mostly in London on an allowance of £30 a year from his brother.
- His influence on the deist controversy began with publication of this book, a third edition of which appeared in 1729. The infidel was Anthony Collins, who had maintained in the book alluded to in the title that the New Testament is based on the Old and that not the literal but only the allegorical sense of the prophecies can be quoted in proof of the Messiahship of Jesus; the apostate was the clergy who had forsaken the allegorical method of the fathers. Woolston denied the proof from miracles, called in question the fact of Christ's resurrection and other miracles of the New Testament, and held that they must be interpreted allegorically. Two years later he began a series of Discourses on the same subject, in which he applied in detail the principles of his Moderator to the miracles of the Gospels. In all six Discourses (and two defences of them) appeared between 1727 and 1729, of which 30,000 copies were said to have been sold. The Discourses got him in real trouble. He was tried before Chief Justice Raymond in 1729 and sentenced to a year's imprisonment plus a fine of £25 for each of the first four Discourses with imprisonment until paid and with release contingent on his supplying security for his good behavior. Failing to provide such security, he died in confinement. Upwards of 60 pamphlets appeared in response to his Moderator and Discourses. [Adapted from the article on Woolston in the 11th Britannica].
a notable English agriculturalist, Young is best known for his 1780 Tour of Ireland and this account of France, regarded as a classic period British description of France and the ancien regime just before the revolution.
Blake p. 499; Hirsch VI: 375; Waller 10493; Osler 4298 (1780 2nd edition only). "The first complete study of the anatomy of the human eye, including the first description of the 'zonule of Zinn' and the 'annulus of Zinn' [GM 1484]. "Zinn, one of Haller's best pupils at Göttingen, became professor of medicine there. Although he died very young, he produced this important book on the anatomy of the eye, which is a fundamental work in the history of ophthalmology" [Heirs of Hippocrates #966].Section 1: Books Printed Before 1800 (A-L)
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