Michael Johan van. Puellae monstrosae delineatio, quam annuente summo numine …

by CAMPEN

£1,350 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

A ‘Monstrous Girl’ Described and Depicted CAMPEN, Michael Johan van. Puellae monstrosae delineatio, quam annuente summo numine … Leiden: Jacob Douzy . 1793. 4to. Contemporary full red morocco, tooled in gilt to a panel design, large floral cornerpieces, centrepieces composed of smaller floral tools, borders roll-tooled in gilt, spine ruled and gilt and decorated with floral tools, patterned endpapers of pink and green flowers; pp. v, [1 (blank)], 13, 8, [1 (blank)], with half-title, 2 folding copper-engraved plates by P[ieter] de Mare after A[braham] Delfos; typographic ornaments to title, typographic headpieces, woodcut tailpiece; nineteenth-century oval blind-embossed stamp ‘Du Cordes, Genève’ to title. First and only edition of this handsomely bound and printed thesis on teratology submitted by Michael Johan van Campen for examination as doctor of medicine at the University of Leiden, focusing in particular on the effigy of a young girl preserved at the university’s anatomical museum, with intersex characteristics and missing both of her legs and her right arm. Van Campen writes that those who lack legs as well as arms are ‘to be considered much more unfortunate [than those only lacking arms or hands], who use their feet in such a way that they hardly seem to lack the use of their hands’ (p. 2, trans. ), citing the work of Italian physician Matteo Bazzani (1674–1749) on teratology and its incorporation into Gaetano Tacconi’s 1751 dissertation De nonnullis cranii ossiumque

• Binding: Hardcover

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