4to (198 x 148 mm), pp [viii] 509 [27, 'Catalogue of some books printed for and sold by H. Brome, since the dreadful fire of London, to 1676, index, and corrigenda], with engraved portrait and 3 engraved plates; a fine, crisp copy in contemporary vellum. £4250
First edition of Glisson's rare work on the digestive organs and internal tissues. 'Glisson introduced the idea of irritability as a specific property of all human tissue, a hypothesis which had no effect upon contemporary physiology, but which was later demonstrated experimentally by Haller (Garrison and Morton).
'Stimulated by ideas of his friend George Ent, Glisson elaborated a theory which he revised in his last medical work, the Tractatus de ventriculo et intestinis (1677). The theory presented itself as follows: The nerves carry a nutritive juice (succus nutrivus) secreted by the brain between cortex and medulla from particles of the arterial blood. The psychic spirits are the "fixed spirits" of this juice, which serves nutrition rather than the function of body fibers. As a chemical substance, the psychic spirits cannot flow fast enough to assure simultaneity of events in the brain and the peripheral parts. Nerve action is transmitted by a vibration of the nerves (caused by localized contraction of the brain), and the muscle fibers then contract because of irritability, a property which they share with all fibers of the body.
'...Natural irritability was a property attributed to almost all living parts of the body including the blood ..., a property independent of the nerves. Irritability presupposed perception of the irritating object, appetite to attain it (if pleasant) or to flee it (if unpleasant), and motion to realize the appetite.
'In sense organs connected with the brain, natural perception was elevated to sensitive, that is, conscious, perception, and it became psychic where the fibers followed commands coming from the brain. But these higher forms of perception, depending on organization, did not supersede natural perception, without which the fibers could not perceive messages from the brain...
'The doctrine of irritability does not exhaust the content of the Tractatus... which, apart from the treatise indicated by the title, also contains a treatise on skin, hair, nails, fat, abdominal muscles, peritoneum, and omentum. [It] constitutes a monumental work on general anatomy and on anatomy and physiology of the digestive organs... Apart from discussing the theory of digestion (there is even an appendix on fermentation), Glisson manages to include theories of embryogenesis (in which the relationship to Harvey is particularly interesting)' (DSB).
Only one copy, and that imperfect, has appeared at auction in the last thirty years.
Wing G859; Garrison and Morton 579; Krivatsy 4828 (lacking portrait); Waller 3586; Wellcome III p 126
GBP 4250.00
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