FABRICIUS, ab Aquapendente, Hieronymus.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

De respiratione et eius instrumentis, Libri duo; First edition of each of these four works on animal motion and physiology by the founder of embryology and major Renaissance anatomist, bound together. The four editions were later re-issued together in 1625, with a collected title page, index, "ad lectorem", and addenda, this volume apparently separate to that issue without any of the additions.All four works "may be considered as parts of the uncompleted but monumental Totius animalis fabricae theatrum which he meant to publish and to which he devoted many years" (DSB, IV, p. 508). Fabricius had previously suggested that students could eventually bind all his individual tracts together (in the dedication to De venarum ostiolis, 1603), perhaps advice the contemporary owner followed here. All four tracts had a noted influence on his contemporaries. His assertion in De respiratione that the hearts and arteries have a respiratory function (following Galen) was explicitly rejected by Harvey in his De motu cordis.

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