Surgery and Orthopaedics

FERRO AUGUSTO. Alcune operazioni di autoplastica … Rome, Tipografia Contedini, 1846.

£2450

Exceedingly rare first and apparently only edition of this intriguing account of three different operations performed by Ferro, a prominent nineteenth-century Italian surgeon and a member of the Medico-Surgical Academy, Ferrara, describing his ground-breaking techniques for plastic surgery of the face.

Published nine years after Alcea Feliciano’s publication of the important Operazioni chirurgiche which describe the procedures performed by the famous surgeon Paolo Baroni, one of the foremost promoters of autoplastic and anaplastic surgery in Italy, Ferro’s is a relatively early contribution to this procedure, and at a time when Italian plastic surgery became to rank with the French and German. 

PALLIANI, Ludovico. Ricerche sopra due machine chirurgiche inventate dal Signor D. Alberto Pieropane Vicentino. La prima per le fratture della gamba, l’altra per le fratture, e lussazioni del braccio. Rome, Antonio Fulgoni, 1789.

£1500

Only edition of this treatise by the chief surgeon and professor of surgery and anatomy of the Archispedale del Santissimo San Salvatore in San Giovanni Laterano.

The work describes two orthopaedic devices recently invented by the Abbot Alberto Pieropane Vicentino, ‘a man of singular talents’ (p. 10 of the work). The first is a device designed to support a fractured leg, the second for fractures and dislocations of the arm. The bulk of the text describes the devices’ advantages in treatment or support.

PARACELSUS, Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Erster [-dritter] Theil der grossen Wundartzney … der Leib und Wundartzney Doctoris, von allen Wunden, Stich, Schüss, Brendt, Thierbissz, Beinbrüch … [Colophon:] Frankfurt, Georg Rabe and heirs of Weygand Han, [1563].

£9500

First edition of Paracelsus’ Great Surgery to contain these fine title woodcuts, and the woodcut of surgical instruments.