CARPUE, Joseph Constantine.

Large 4to, pp. (vi), ii, 102, (2), hand-coloured stipple-engraved frontispiece and 4 plates (2 coloured). With the half-title and final errata and advertisement leaf. Old and faint library stamp on the plates, and a small stamp on the backs, otherwise a very clean copy. Good modern half diced calf antique.

FIRST EDITION. The first book of modern times on plastic surgery, reviving the work of Gaspare Tagliacozzi in the sixteenth century. “Tagliacozzi’s work remained virtually forgotten until the revival of plastic surgery by Joseph Constantine Carpue and Carl Ferdinand von Graefe [1818] in the early nineteenth century” (Grolier One Hundred (Medicine), 23). “But it was Joseph Constantine Carpue who performed the first rhinoplastic operations in Europe in modern times, using the forehead flap of the Indian method, in October 1814 and January 1815, and who in 1816 published the work that stimulated surgeons in Germany and France to follow his example, thus initiating the manifold activities that culminated in plastic surgery as we know it today. In An Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose, Carpue not only described his first two rhinoplasties but also gave careful and detailed consideration to Tagliacozzi and his method, to the Indian method, and to the doctrine of adhesion and the physiological processes involved. His publication is a landmark in the development of plastic surgery, both as a record of his own surgical achievement and as a classic in the history of plastic surgery” (Gnudi & Webster, pp. 315–316). This book is the greatest classic of plastic surgery after Tagliacozzi. Carpue takes the unusual step of stating on the title-page that the plates for his book were engraved by Charles Turner, “the most important mezzotint engraver of his day” (ODNB). In 1812 Turner was appointed engraver-in-ordinary to the king (the book is dedicated to the Prince Regent). G&M 5737. Gnudi & Webster, The life and times of Gaspare Tagliacozzi, pp. 315–320, illustrating three of the plates. Zeis Index 509. This was the only English edition (until a modern reprint).