Glisson - Anatomia hepatis - 1665

[MEDICINE – ANATOMY – THE LIVER – LYMPHATIC SYSTEM – ANATOMICAL THEATRE FRONTISPIECE]

The first monograph ever devoted to the liver – Glisson’s landmark treatise, with a striking engraved dissection frontispiece - WITH 3 DOUBLE-PAGE ENGRAVINGS

“Francisci Glissonii, In Inclyta Cantabrigiae Academia Medicinae Professoris publici, & Collegii Londinensis Socii, Anatomia Hepatis. Cui praemittuntur Quaedam ad rem Anatomicam universe spectantia. Et ad calcem Operis subjiciuntur nonnulla de Lymphae-ductibus nuper repertis. Editio nova, caeteris emendatior.”

Francis Glisson (1597–1677)
Amstelodami (Amsterdam), apud Joannem Janssonium à Waesberge & Elizaeum Weyerstraten, 1665
with 3 double-page engravings and 7 smaller engravings

With engraved frontispiece depicting a public dissection in an anatomical theatre, and woodcut armillary sphere device on the title page.

Before Glisson, only the external form of the liver had been described. He was the first to give an accurate account of its internal structure – above all of the fibrous sheath enclosing the portal tracts, which bears his name to this day as Glisson’s capsule – and the first to describe its blood supply and the sphincter of the bile duct with real precision. The work also introduced his influential concept of irritability: the idea that the gall bladder and its ducts expel bile because they are irritated by it, a notion rooted in Glisson’s vitalist opposition to Cartesian mechanism and one that would shape physiological thought well into the eighteenth century. The treatise opens with a substantial section on general anatomy and closes with observations on the lymphatic vessels, then only recently discovered – one of the great anatomical sensations of the mid-seventeenth century.

The engraved frontispiece is a particular pleasure: it shows a public anatomy in progress, the cadaver laid out on the table while the professor demonstrates from the open body, surrounded by colleagues and watched from the gallery above by a crowd of spectators – a vivid image of the anatomical theatre as both scientific institution and public spectacle.

Francis Glisson was Regius Professor of Physic at Cambridge, a Fellow and later President of the Royal College of Physicians, a founding Fellow of the Royal Society, and one of the earliest and most committed supporters of William Harvey’s doctrine of the circulation of the blood. His “Anatomia Hepatis”, first published in London in 1654, is the first monograph ever written on the anatomy of the liver and remained for generations the most important treatise on the physiology of the digestive system.

References: Garrison-Morton 972. Norman 911. Heirs of Hippocrates 472. Cf. Grolier Medicine 29 (first edition)

Pages: frontispice + title page + 4 p. + 36 p. + 423 p. + 18 p.

Condition: Overall a fine copy. The binding is firm. The pages are lightly browned and slightly damaged on the edges. Complete, with no leaves missing. With 3 double-page engravings and 7 engravings in the text.

This listing was created with the assistance of AI.