PECQUET, Jean.

Small 4to, pp. (xii), 108. With 6 engravings in the text (1 full-page). Woodcut initials, divisional title to the Dissertatio Anatomica de Circulatione Sanguinis, et Chyli Motu. Contemporary limp vellum. Paper slightly browned and vellum darkened, but an excellent copy. Early signature of Dupin of Montpellier at foot of title, bookplate of Meyer Friedman (1910–2001), physician and book collector.

FIRST EDITION of Pecquet’s famous work in which he records his discovery of the chyle reservoir. “In his experiments with live dogs Pecquet discovered the thoracic duct and cisterna chylii. He correctly described the termination of the chyliferous vessels (Aselli’s ‘lacteal veins’) in the cisterna, refuting the erroneous notion that the vessels ended in the liver; he also described the junction of the thoracic duct at the union of the jugular and subclavial veins. In a rare early instance of nearly simultaneous triple independent discovery, the thoracic duct was also discovered independently by Thomas Bartholin (1652; see G&M 1096) and by the Swedish physician Olof Rudbeck (1653; see G&M 1098)” (Norman). In Paris Harvey’s theories of the circulation of the blood had been rejected at the university, and in this book Pecquet, who worked with a small group of Harveyites at the Jardin du Roi, included a dissertation on the circulation, which ensured its acceptance there. See “Appendix IV, The Acceptance of Harvey’s Doctrine during his Lifetime” in Keynes, The Life of William Harvey (1966). G&M 1095. Grolier One Hundred (Medicine), 28A. Norman catalogue 1676. Foster, Lectures on the History of Physiology, p. 49.