19th C. Breast Cancer Lithograph Makes Surgery Look Beautiful

by Stephen J. Gertz

A copy of the first edition of the most complete anatomical atlas and arguably the most beautiful of the nineteenth century, Jean Baptiste Marc Bourgery's Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, comprenant la médecine opératoire (1831-1854), is being offered by Christie's-Paris in its Importants Livres  Ancienes, Livres d'Artistes, et Manuscrits sale November 6, 2013.

Amongst the 726 beautifully designed lithographed plates within its sixteen books in eight folio volumes is Fonctionnant sur une tumeur cancéreuse (Operating on a Cancerous Tumor), which depicts a neat and bloodless breast ablation upon a beautiful woman in calm repose as two sets of hands perform the surgery as if the horror was Photoshopped out leaving only the sheen of precision and 19th century state-of-the-art medicine.

How 'bout those clean, well-manicured, bare hands so gracefully intruding into the patient's flesh as if dancing a finger ballet? The two inset images show the successful result of the surgeons' efforts, and the whole presents a procedure sterile of reality if not of pathogens. The blood-curdling screams have been excised for your comfort; surgical anesthesia was in its infancy and ether and chloroform were not yet standard. This is an artistic exercise in medical aesthetics.

Bourgery studied medicine in Paris with René Laennec, inventor of the stethoscope, and Guillaume Dupuytren, the French anatomist and military surgeon who won fame treating Napoleon's hemorrhoids as the imperial proctologist, before Bourgery continued his work his work at Romilly. 

Published over a period of twenty-three years, this atlas was the result of titanic work by Bourgery, who died before the last volume's publication. This huge artistic work was supervised by Nicholas-Henri Jacob (1782-1871), student of Jacques-Louis David. 

"Without issue one of the most beautifully illustrated anatomical and surgical treatises ever published in any language" (Heirs of Hippocrates).

We post this today to remind all that breast cancer needs to be early detected and treated. Despite Bourgery's neat and tidy depiction scrubbed of life and death, breast cancer surgery is not pretty. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month ends tomorrow.

__________

BOURGERY, Jean Baptiste Marc (1797-1849). Traité complet de l’anatomie de l’homme, comprenant la médecine opératoire. Paris: C.-A. Delaunay, 1831-1854. First edition. Sixteen tomes in eight folio volumes (425 x 310 mm). Eight lithographed title pages, 724 plates (of 726, lacks vol. V plate 5 and vol. VII plate 36). Lacks the frontispiece. Some foxing, a few tears. Contemporary half black morocco, smooth spine.

Heirs of Hippocrates 1569. Waller 1342. Wellcome II, p. 214.

__________

Image courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Rare Ten Cent Book Will Improve Your Face

by Stephen J. Gertz

As the nine-year old prodigy qualified to perform an appendectomy using a radio-knife because I studied the instrument and procedure in All About Great Medical Discoveries by David Dietz (1960), and as the man twenty-six years later responsible for marketing Lindsay Wagner's The Accupressure Facelift while head of Karl-Lorimar Video's How-To division in 1986, I am uniquely qualified to discuss all manner of surgical and non-surgical interventions to alter facial topography and return the skin and subcutaneous muscles from passé to pristine as a baby's butt.

That's why I'm so excited to tell you about Professor Anthony Barker's Improve Your Face By Making Faces (1903). 

Mea culpa.

Are you depressed because your depressor septi, depressor supercilii, depressor anguli oris, and depressor labii inferioris muscles have let you down and are making you look inferior to your once superior visage?  Begone double-chins and puffy eyes! Say sayonara to those irrigation canals once fine wrinkles, let crow's feet take wing never to return, and bid fare-thee-well to the face that now horrifies when it stares back at you in the mirror.

Professor Barker, principal of New York City's School of Physical Culture (110 W. 42d St.),  provides five exercises (with halftone examples of each) guaranteed to banish all that blemishes your facial appearance.

“If you want to improve your face, make faces. That is the best way to treat it to upbuilding physical culture exercise. It sounds simple enough and silly enough, but it is neither. A short trial will prove that the right kind of faces cannot be made in a jiffy, although, with a little patient practice they can be executed…The benefits that accrue to both men and women from making the faces herein described ten or fifteen minutes a day, either upon rising or before going to bed, are manifold.” 

"Bride of Wildenstein."

Prof. Barker, apparently projecting into the future with New York socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein's reported $4 million worth of procedures in mind, includes a brief cautionary tale about the perils of facial plastic surgery - particularly if performed by a nine-year old with radio-knife, botox, silicone, and a satchel full o' implants.

Originally published at 25¢ but discounted to 10¢ if you time-travel back to 1903 and act at once while it's on your mind yet $100 if you return to 2013 and Garrett Scott Bookseller still has a copy, your Occipitofrontalis, Temporoparietalis, Procerus, Nasalis, Orbicularis oculi, Corrugator supercilii, Auricular (anterior, superior and posterior), Orbicularis oris,  Risorius, Zygomaticus major, Zygomaticus minor, Levator labii superioris, Levator labii superioris alaeque nasi, Levator anguli oris, Buccinator, and Mentalis muscles will thank you. As well as romantic partners.

Never again will you freak-out when teased with the mysterious elementary school taunt, "Your epidermis is showing!" - though you may be overcome by syncope when you see stuffed derma on a delicatessen menu and imagine against your will Jocelyn Wildenstein on a plate with a side of potato salad.

OCLC notes only a twenty-two page edition of Improve Your Face By Making Faces, at two locations only. But, then again, how many libraries in the world would acquire it in the first place? That said, the plates in this little gem follow in the tradition of Louis-Léopold Boilly's Recueil des Grimaces (1823-28), his series of ninety-six hand-colored lithographed plates that caricatured human facial expressions.
__________

BARKER, Professor Anthony. Improve Your Face By Making Faces. (New York: William R. Robinson, Printer, 1903). Third edition. Sixteenmo. 31, [1] pp. Five half-tone photo-illustrations. Original printed green wrappers.

__________

Exercise images courtesy of Garrett Scott Bookseller, currently offering this book, with our thanks.

__________

__________

The Elegantly Macabre Anatomical Plates Of Gautier-D'Agoty

by Stephen J. Gertz

A rare, stunning first edition, first issue copy of Jacques-Fabien Gautier-D'Agoty's  unsettlingly beautiful, elegantly macabre and disarming color-printed book, Anatomie des parties de la génération de l'homme et de la femme, published in 1773, has come to market. Within, what might best be described as fashionably attractive and eroticized living cadavers as still-life subjects depict the  reproductive as well as the musculatory, circulatory and nervous systems of man and woman.

Comprised of eight color mezzotints forming four pairs of figures with accompanying text, the plates are often found joined together, as reproduced here. Colin Franklin, in A Catalogue of Early Colour Printing From Chiaroscuro to Aquatint (1977), provides a spirited and enthusiastic description of the book:

"The Anatomie des Parties de la Génération begins with tall plates of a man and woman, each formed from two sheets and folding out from the book. All the old art is here, with a new discretion and moderation of tones. These first plates showing muscles, arteries and the nervous system are worked out and tabulated in detail. Behind the man is a ghostly arm and shoulder showing the patterns of veins. Among other adjuncts by his foot is an elegant wine-glass meant to demonstrate the texture of male semen mixed with water 'dans le moment de l'ejaculation.' Anyone may make this experiment, he says encouragingly, and repeat it several times.

"The female figure is a typical Gautier plate, stripped and dissected but with healthy head and throat, charming classical face and hair in perfect order, standing poised as a dancer. Indeed, a Gautier ballet might be devised with dancers in such disguise."

I'm thinking Saint-Saëns Danse Macabre, performed in Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol.

Franklin continues: "These later learned works have longer descriptive and discursive texts than the merely explanatory sheets with accompanied the early plates [he produced in 1745-46, 1748, 1752 and 1754]. Gautier became fascinated by his subject. In the next folding illustration we find a fair instance of his semi-erotic treatment of a scientific theme - one woman standing in profile, her living head looking back to us above a naked breast; the womb open, with folded figure of a foetus. At her feet and knees, almost in a lesbian attitude, a nude figure finely modeled sits to show the 'parties de la génération' and from the front her dissected womb.

"The final folding illustration is of a similar sort, two figures of which the lower seems a curious relaxed classical nude with impeccable hair, her child just born and resting on her lap, the umbilical cord still uncut. Woman and child are in open dissection. At the mother's feet is a debris of palcenta and cords as if they have not yet been cleared from last night's party.

"That Gautier found the whole theme a fascinating one is clear from his text, which ranges from moral and physical distinctions on the nature of virginity, to an anecdote about Mary Queen of Scots" (pp. 47-48).

Jacques-­Fabien Gautier d’Agoty (1717–1785) studied briefly with Jacob Christoph Le Blon, the "inventor" of color printing, before embarking on his own career with a series of anatomical and natural history illustrations that successfully exploited the potential of color printing. Gautier worked with an anatomist, Guichard Joseph Duverney, lecturer in anat­omy at the Jardin du Roi. Duverney prepared the corpses, Gautier drew them, and then transferred each drawing  to four mezzotint plates, yellow, blue, red, and black, that were printed in succession to achieve the desired result. This printing technique demanded precision in registration, often absent in the images but present here. Many of the larger plates were then covered in varnish, in part to hide the imperfections in registration, as well as to give them the glossy look of varnished paintings. In this copy with sharp registration varnish was unnecessary and the plates (the first dated 1771, the remainder 1773) are far more attractive. 

No copies have come to auction within the last thirty-six years. The asking price is £16,500 ($26,070).

___________

GAUTIER D'AGOTY, Jacques-Fabien. Anatomie des parties de la génération de l'homme at de la femme: représentés avec leur couleurs naturelles, selon le nouvel art, jointe a l'angéologie de tout le corps humain, et ce qui concerne la grossesse et les accouchements. Paris: J.B. Brunet and Demonville, 1773. First edition, first issue. Folio (422 x 273 mm). [ii], 34, [4]. Eight color-printed mezzotint plates. Publisher's card portfolio with plates loose in pocket at rear as issued.

Wellcome III, p. 97. Blake, J., NLM 18th cent.,p. 169. Roberts and Tomlinson, Fabric of the Body n111.

___________

Images courtesy of William Patrick Watson Antiquarian Books, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.

___________

___________

Beware Of Jewish Doctors, 1937 Edition

by Stephen J. Gertz

The American Medical Association and the editor of The Journal of the American Medical Association come under attack in this thinly-veiled anti-Semitic rant in the form of a allegorical farce in dialogue published in 1937.

The characters who converse include Dr. Gil T. Conscience ("A little too honest to be a successful doctor"), Dr. Buryem Atta Profit ("In partnership with Mr. Undertaker"), Dr. Cuttem Upp ("A versatile surgeon cutting for money"), Dr. Smarty ("Talks too much and tells secrets of the American Meddlers Association"),  Dr. Skinnem Alive ("His scruples never interfere with his money-making"), Dr. Pop Off (" A free-thinker - resigned from the American Meddlers Association"), Dr. Getsum Moore ("A very frugal person with his eye on the money"), the Milo Brothers ("Owners of a great money-making hospital," i.e. the Mayo Clinic), and the Hebrew harbinger of all ill-health and medical hooey, Dr. Morey Fishback Kike ("A notorious quack and leader of the American Meddlers Association").

Dr. Kike is the thinly-veiled Dr. Morris Fishbein (1889-1976), editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association 1924-1950, founding Editor of Medical World News (1961), fierce crusader against medical quackery, and strong proponent of regulating medical devices, too many of which were useless yet heavily promoted cures for cancer and all manner of medical woe. For this, he was excoriated by fringe medicos, snake-oil charlatans, and desperate citizens willing to believe anything that promised them relief, no matter how hocus-pocus, unproven, and medical-sounding the malarkey. Evidenced-based medicine was the enemy, and the AMA a corrupt, hook-nosed medical-political machine that needed to be crushed if the profession was to remain open to new, promising therapies no matter how broken the promise, how gimcrack the gizmo.

There is, of course, no anti-Semitism intended in this scurrilous little pamphlet. It's only a coincidence that Dr. Kike is circumcised, has a Jewish-sounding name, and invites low ethnic epithet. To make sure readers understand her pure intent, Ms. Rogers, a naturopath, offers the following disingenuous defense in the Preface:

"Because the villain in this story happens to be a Jew, I do not wish to leave the impression that there is anything wrong with the Jewish people - their honesty, their integrity, or their methods of doing business. I am only using the term American Meddlers Association, because I have heard this term used in an amusing and interesting manner. As far as I know, there is no such association. Because the villain on this story happens to be a Jew whom I have heard called Dr. Morey Fishback Kike, does not mean that there is such a person."

In sum, it's the rich, money-grubbing Jewish doctors of the AMA who are putting the nation at risk, not good guys like Royal Rife, the microscoptician and electrical engineer who dreamed up a high-frequency emission machine that safely zapped cancer to death. Only it didn't. So the AMA banned it, thus insuring that they would be associated by some with the destruction of an innocent genius who got in its way and the snuffing-out of a medical entrepreneur whose only crime was innovation, not peddling false hope to the desperate. Think Laetrile.

Despite its defamatory nature, American  Meddlers Association was so highly regarded that during the 41st Congress of the American Naturopath Association one of the featured speakers ceded to Esther Rogers his time to address the assembly.

Full disclosure: I was, as a child, one of Dr. Fishbein's star medical students. His Handy Home Medical Advisor (1957) was my bible when seeking an innocuous yet serious-enough childhood ailment whose symptoms I could reasonably fake and get out of school for a day, a week, a month, and, in one case, four months - a miracle of modern medical science:

Based upon careful study of his description I successfully feigned infectious mononucleosis as a ten year old fourth-grader, so successfully that when tested by my pediatrician I actually had infectious mononucleosis. Dr. Fishbein was a genius, and I suspect that I was not the only kid who got through childhood by earning a Ph.D in Pre-Pubescent, Pubescent, and Adolescent Medical Truancy and Malingering while under his tutelage. He was a medical meddler only in the eyes of my parents. To me, he was Doc Marvel, The Man Who Made School Stop.

__________

ROGERS, Esther. American Meddlers Association... Ethical -- Ultra-ethical! Kansass City, MO: Esther Rogers, 1937. First edition. Octavo. 32 pp. Original yellow-orange wrappers.

__________

Image courtesy of Garrett Scott, the Bibliophagist, currently offering this item, with our thanks.

__________

__________

The First American Sex Manual

by Stephen J. Gertz

First American edition, London [Boston]: 1766.

It's not a Kama Sutra for the Colonies;  coital postures are nowhere to be found nor Vedic wisdom on "sucking a mango fruit."  Nor is it The Joy of Early American Sex by Proctor Alex Comfort, though the joy of connubial relations within the conjugal bed is not ignored. And, for the record, an ancient Greek philosopher had nothing to do with it.

Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece was, nonetheless, the first guide to sexual relations, pregnancy, and childbirth published in America - in Boston, yet, that hotbed of Colonial steam and agitation - in 1766 by Zechariah Feeling, i,e. Zechariah Fowle, with whom famed early American printer Isaiah Thomas apprenticed and, later, partnered. Three years after The Seven Years War ended, Americans were ready and anxious to read about the facts of life. But, beyond basic  (if somewhat inaccurate) sexual anatomy, there weren't many facts. Folklore, superstition, and old wive's tales form the basis of instruction.

Part I, Chapter 1: A particular description of the parts or instruments of generation, both in men and women.

"The organ of generation in man, nature has placed obvious to the sight, and it is called the Yard, and because hanging without the belly, is called the Penis a Pendendo...

"The next thing is the Clytoris, which is a sinewy and hard part of the womb, replete with spongy and black matter wihin, in the same manner as the side ligaments of the yard: and indeed resembles it in form, suffers erection and falling in the same manner, and it both stirs up lust, and gives delight in copulation: for without this, the fair sex neither desire mutual embraces, nor have pleasure in them. nor conceive by them: and according to the greatness or smallness of this part, they are more or less fond of men's embraces; so that it may properly be stiled the seat of lust."

Chapter II: Of the restriction laid upon men in the use of carnal copulation, by the institution of marriage; with the advantage it brings to mankind; and the proper time for it.

"...the holy Jesus has told us, That in the beginning it was so; the marriage of one man to one woman: so that as these conjugal delights cannot be enjoyed but in a married state...And it is in the breaking of this order that has filled the world wiith confusion and debauchery, has brought diseases on the body, consumptions on estates, and eternal ruin to the soul, if not repented of. Let therefore either sex, that have a desire to enjoy the delights of mutual embraces, take care that they do it in a married state with their own wives or husbands, or else it will become a curse to them instead of a blessing...

"The inclinations of virgins to marriage, is to be known by divers symtoms; for when they arrive to ripe-age, which is about fourteen of fifteen, their natural purgations begin to flow, and then the blood...does, by its abundance, stir up their minds to venery; to which external causes may excite them; for their spirits are brisk and inflamed when they arrive at this age, and their bodies are often more heated by their eating sharp and salt things, and by spices, by which their desire of venereal embraces becomes very great, at some critical junctures almost insuperable. And the use of those so much desired enjoyments being denied to virgins, it is often followed by very dangerous, and sometimes dismal consequences, precipitating them into those follies that may bring an indelible stain upon their families, or else it brings upon them the greensickness or other diseases. But when they are married, and those desires satisfied by their husbands, thise distempers vanish...And this strong inclination of theirs may be known by their eager gazing at men, and affecting their company, which sufficiently demonstrates that nature prompts them to desire coition. Nor is this the case of virgins only, but the same may be observed in young brisk widows, who cannot be satisfied without due benevolence paid them."

Chapter III: Of virginity, what it is, how it may be known, by what means it may be lost, and how a person may know that it is so.

"Virginity untouched and taintless, is the boast and pride of the fair sex, but they generally commend  to put it off; for as good as it is, they care not how soon they are honestly rid of it. And I think they are right; for if they keep it too long, it grows useless, or at least loses much of its value, a stale virgin (if such a thing there be) being looked upon like an old almanack out of date."

Part II, Chapter I:  What conception is; what is pre-requisite thereto; how a woman may know whether she has conceived, and whether a boy or girl.

Here Aristotle describes how, in order to conceive, the minds of of men and women should be free of care and business and bad thoughts: "All such things are enemies of Venus. And let their animal and vital spirits be powerfully exhilirated by some brisk  and generous restoratives; and let them to invigorate their fancies, survey the lovely beauties of each other, and bear the bright ideas of them in their minds: and if it happens, that instead of beauty, there is any thing that looks like imperfection or deformity (for nature is not alike bountiful to all) let them be covered over with a veil of oblivion."

The consequences of bearing bad thoughts or gazing upon anything less than pleasing to the eye during coitus are dire: this is how children are conceived as physical monsters and born grossly deformed, as illustrated by the woodcuts of such and the stories of these misbegotten children.

Men are advised not to abruptly end the festivities. "When the bridegroom has done what nature has promted him to do he ought to take heed of withdrawing too suddenly out of the field of love lest he should, by so doing, make way for cold to strike into the womb."

As far as determining the sex of the unborn, if a woman feels the child on the right side, it is a boy; on the left, a girl.

Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece is an old warhorse. Published in various versions in England and America, with roots dating back to 1507, it was so popular that the last recorded edition appeared as late as 1883.

"The 'medical' work most frequently reprinted in America during the eighteenth and and early nineteenth centuries, Aristotle's work was also the first popular sex manual in the English language and for advice relied upon occult and folk traditions. Austin records twenty-seven editions published in this country before 1821" (American Antiquarian Society, A Society's Chief Joy [1969]).

Though openly published, Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece was not openly sold nor were its publishers anxious to be transparently associated with it.

"It is not at all surprising that our first popular treatise on gynecology and obstetrics should have led a shy and furtive existence, In spite of the fact that such topics were as interesting then as now, the eighteenth and early nineteenth century Americans frowned on the popular dissemination of information regarding the facts of life...There was, however, one group of treatises which had considerable popularity for a century and a quarter but which little is known and seldom met with today...Almost none of its early publishers had the hardihood to print their names on the title pages and some of them used an entirely fictitious imprint...The most popular of these early tracts was 'Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece'...illustrated with crude woodcuts, informative but with little anatomical accuracy.. The text is an amusing mixture of sensible advice, pious admonition, ribald verse, popular superstition and very little medical knowledge. That they were both interesting and useful in their day, we cannot doubt, that they played an important part in the development of our growing country, we may be sure" (Vail, What a Young Puritan Ought To Know, American Antiquarian Society Librarian's Report, 1939, pp. 22-29).

Major variations in text, content, and arrangement exist amongst the many English and American editions (OCLC records 176); publishers appear to have added material, edited, or rewritten text at their whim. An early London edition, for instance, includes a section titled, A Private Looking-Glass for the Female Sex. This part was excised in later editions and replaced with A Treasure of Health or The Family Physician. I suspect the reason being that by mating the sex manual with an instructional on home health and remedies for common maladies the book would be considered more a medical text and thus  acceptable.

Who wrote it? It appears that William Salmon (1644-1713), the English quack and self-styled "Professor of Physik" is responsible for the seventeenth century editions upon which all subsequent ones were based.

This, the [Boston] 1766 edition is extremely scarce, with only three extant copies recorded: at the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and one that recently blew into the marketplace offered by Howard S. Mott Inc of Sheffield, Massachusetts - and immediately flew out. It sold for $12,500.

Yet the first American edition of Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece is priceless, if not in commercial value, then certainly as the  earliest book on sexuality published in pre-Revolutionary America, for its insight into contemporary attitudes, and as the most popular tract on the subject in America for 100 years afterward.

"The Effigies of a Maid all Hairy, and an Infant that was Black,
by the Imagination of their Parents."

The book was, in its way, hot stuff, "sold under the counter or by peddlers...the illustrations were prurient, and in fact demonstrate how images cause abnormal sexual arousal. They show monsters conceived while their parents were looking at pictures - in the case of the hairy woman...By the same token the sight of a naked woman inspires Aristotle to write, and since this was the only illustration of a naked woman printed in colonial America [see above], grotesque as it is, it surely aroused many a young man" (Green and Wilson, From the Bottom Up: Popular Reading and Writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of Early American Imprints. Library Company of Philadelphia, 2004, p. 18).

Here, then, is evidence of the first  nude centerfold in an American publication, 187 years before Hugh Hefner presented Marilyn Monroe as Miss December, 1953, in Playboy #1:

Likes: Natural Philosophy, Botany, Politiks, Musik, good Bookes.
Favorite Pastimes: Long walks on the beach at sunset with my companion, Fanny, and drives up the Pacific Coast Highway by coach with my father.
Education: I'm studying sewing, cooking, and domestic management at Miss Fowlmouth's Finishing School for Young Ladies.
Favorite Quote: "The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still" (Mr. Pope). 
Heart's Desire: A good manse with stately yard.

__________

[SALMON, William, et al]. Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece, in three parts; displaying the secrets of nature in the generation of Man. Regularly digested into chapters and sections...To which is added, A Treasure of Heath, of  the Family Physician: being choice and approved Remedies for all the several Distempers incident to Human Bodies. The Thirteenth edition. London [i.e. Boston]: Printed and Sold for Zechariah Feeling [Zechariah Fowle], 1766. Octavo. viii, [9]-140 pp.

__________

All images reproduced by license from the American Antiquarian Society, with our thanks.A special thank you to the AAS staff for their assistance.

__________
__________

What To Expect When You're Done Expecting: Dr. Spock in 1577

By Stephen J. Gertz

Safety Helmet.

It's in Latin, so it's not quite what you want to have on the nightstand when your baby or child has a bad case of whatever and you can''t translate "Vocant IX-I-I" in time for the paramedics to arrive and resolve the crisis before your kid kicks the bucket.

But though not a popular guide, De arte medica infantium by Omnibonius Ferrari (1577) was a key go-to book on pediatrics, Dr. Spock's Baby & Child Care for sixteenth century doctors and Latin-literate parents who could afford it.

Breast Milk Pump.

Divided into three parts, in 195 pages it covers the management of wet nurses; the care and feeding of the newborn; and the diseases of children.

Typically bound together with De arte medica infantium aphorismorum, a list of 273 aphorisms by Ferrari on the care and diseases of children based on the writings of Hippocrates and Galen but with a number of additions from contemporary sources, the two works present the state of the medical arts for infant care.

Toilet Training.

Or particular interest for 21st century mothers are the four text engravings which illustrate a self-operated breast pump for harvesting milk, a device for training children to walk, a  potty-training  toilet, and a helmet made to protect the child's head from injury, each early designs for now commonplace items in the inventory of modern motherhood.

In an age of harsh conditions, the concept of the child as tender and vulnerable and in need of a nurturing environment was beginning to emerge. De arte medica infantium  was amongst the most important contemporary medical books of its kind and provides insight into views on  late sixteenth century child care and psychology that will be startling familiar to modern parents.

Rolling Crib For Training To Walk.

"The illustrations are of interest…as they show two commonly used child-training devices of the past – the running stool, ancestor of the present-day walker, and the chair stool,  which held infants in a sitting position. Both of these devices were denounced by Ferrarius’s contemporary Felix Wurtz, who described the undue strain they put on undeveloped infant muscles” (Norman).

"In 1577 Ognibene Ferrari of Verona, Italy, proposed that the home be 'child-proofed'; offered designs for developmentally appropriate walkers, potty chairs, and helmets; and argued that 'the greatest care must be taken that he does not see terrifying pictures, nor should the one who has charge of him shew himself to him with a stern look on his face, lest he cause him fright, and so through depression and overmuch grieving he be ill affected'" (Review of Nurturing Children: A History of Pediatrics in JAMA, Nov. 1, 2000).

Amongst the "terrifying pictures" that should probably be kept from tender eyes is any image of mama mia! Italian actress and mama Monica Bellucci in the lobby of the Excelsior hotel in Rome using Ferrari's breast milk pump while the paparazzi pretend to be ga-ga over her pair of peepers rather than endowments. Grown men can barely tolerate the view without convulsions, forget about little Gianni who might grow up to have visions of sugar plums fairies and marriage to La Cicciolina, a terrifying prospect indeed.

__________

FERRARI, Omnibonius. De arte medica infantium, libri quatuor. Quorum duo priores de tuenda eorum sanitate, posteriores de curandis morbis agunt. [Bound with] De arte medica infantium aphorismorum, particulae tres. Brixiæ [Brescia], apud Franciscum, & Pet. Mariam fratres, de Marchettis, 1577.            

First editions, two works in one. Small quarto. [xii], 195, [1] pp.; 22 pp. With errata, four engraved text illustrations, large illustrated woodcut initials, ornamental head- and tailpieces. Marchetti's anchor and dolphin device on both title pages.

Both reprinted in 1598 and usually bound as one.

Adams F-288 (Aphorismorum), F-289 (De Arte Medica, 1598 ed). Normon 787 (De Arte Medica), 788 (Aphorismorum). Grulee 452 (De Arte Medica), 454 (Aphorismorum).

__________

B. & L. Rootenberg Rare Books and Manuscripts is currently offering a lovely first edition copy of these two volumes bound together.

__________
__________

Novelist Richard Brautigan's Brains At Bancroft Library: A Grand Guignol Adventure!

by Stephen J. Gertz

The Bancroft Library.

The papers of 'Sixties Counterculture novelist and poet Richard Brautigan, who, in 1984, committed suicide at his desk with a gunshot to the head, rest in the The Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley.

Poet J.J. Phillips, while working in the manuscript division at the Bancroft, rough-sorted Brautigan's papers when the library acquired them. She had no idea that latex gloves and surgical mask would be appropriate to the task.

"I know you know that Brautigan blew his brains out, literally blew his mind," she wrote to poet, novelist and essayist Andrei Codrescu at Exquisite Corpse.  "What you might not be aware of is that he blew his brains out all over pages of his last manuscript... I handled them, archived them, ran my hands over his desiccated brain matter on numerous occasions, though at first I had no idea what I was touching because the Library said nothing and even denied what became all too apparent after I eliminated the other possibilities of what this strange stuff could be (I’m not unfamiliar with such things, and my eyes didn’t deceive me).

"The coroner’s report confirmed my suspicions. I see what’s on these pages as something of a completely different order than coffee stains, cigarette burns, the tomato seeds that Josephine Miles idly spat onto her mss., even drops of spittle, blood, semen, and the like.  With Brautigan, these are the actual physical remnants of brain tissue, blood splatters, and cerebral fluid of the very brain that gave birth to the ideas he had and the words he wrote, now creating its own narrative on top of those words; and of course that act insured he’d never think or write another word."

Thus inspired - or, more properly, driven - she wrote a poem about it. 

Brautigan's Brains
 
Brains blasted there
upon the page
gray matter gobbed
blood of the poet congealed
this grotesque palimpsest
last words concealed
beneath the blood
shattered neurons
glial cells unglued
glopped, splattered

A text of rage coagulated
there upon the page.

Axons impel thought to take
that fatal fiery leap
across synapse into act
fiction into fact.

Atoms smash against the skull
the neural net tattered warp and woof
the brain that strings the words extruded
globbed, fragmented, spattered
last words occluded by the final proof

The text of rage coagulated
there upon the page.

It will come as no surprise to those who knew him that the late Peter Howard of Serendipity Books in Berkeley, CA was in the middle of all this.

"Peter sold the papers to TBL, and even he was a bit dodgy when I asked him about it." she wrote to Booktryst. "When Peter sold the typescript, he said he was going to make TBL buy one whether they wanted to or not." (Pure Peter).

He may have been dodgy then but it didn't prevent Peter Howard from later validating the story by literally putting his imprimatur on it.

"Some years ago," Phillips told me, "Peter sold a limited edition signed typescript of this poem [ten copies], printed over a photo of Brautigan’s face, with the title Apoptosis: or Brautigan’s Brains" [2002]. He later published her poem Nigga in the Woodpile (2008).

And what does the Bancroft Library think about the situation?

"I get the sense," she continued,  "that even now they don’t want people to know what’s on those mss. pages (to my knowledge, the catalog description doesn’t mention this, or didn’t when I last saw it a long time ago) because their attitude was so squirrely and obfuscatory when I began asking questions, which is why I was driven to call the coroner, then send for the coroner’s report (ghastly, a tragic death).

"TBL was (is?) bent on denying the fact of what is undeniably there.  I honestly don’t understand why they wouldn’t either encase those specific pages in mylar or remove them for safekeeping and substitute photocopies.  This for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I don’t think your average literary researcher accessing the ms. would be thrilled to learn that he or she had been unknowingly fingering somebody’s brain matter...What about possible pathogens?  What if he had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease?"

Anyone wishing to go trout fishing in the Brautigan papers at the Bancroft Library may first wish to don waders and elbow-length surgical gloves. Or a Hazmat suit.
__________

Mille grazie to J.J. Phillips.

Brautigan's Brains reprinted with the kind permission of the author.

A tip o' the hat to Andrei Codrescu.
__________

Of related interest:

Novelist Richard Brautigan's Unrecorded One Day Marriage Certificate Surfaces.
__________
__________

Jonathan Swift On Women Who Fart (Or Don't)

Today's guest blogger is Stinky the Brontosaurus, recently cloned from an errant strand of DNA recovered from a bone fossil. "Born" with the ability to communicate in a manner unknown during the Jurassic, he is a prehistoric marvel. - SJG

By Stinky the Brontosaurus

I read the news today, oh boy. It appears that my dinosaur brethren and I farted our way into climate change, our effusions of methane warming the Earth and, perhaps, rendering us extinct. Tyrannosaurus Reeks? I'm sticking to the death by asteroid theory. 

Within my bathroom reading library is a book that refutes Fartageddon, one that I routinely peruse while on the throne awaiting an explosion down below. 

The Benefit of Farting Explain’d, a tract attributed to Jonathan Swift (and not to be confused with The Winds of War by Herman Wouk), swiftly, of course, gets to the heart of things, its subtitle a redolent prospectus of what is to come in one of the great run-on titles: 

Or, The Fundament-All Cause of the Distempers incident to the Fair-Sex, enquired into. Proving á Posteriori most of the Dis-ordures In tail’d upon them, are owing to Flatulen-cies not seasonably vented. Wrote in Spanish by Don Fartinando Puff-indorst’, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow. And Translated into English at the Request, and for the Use, of the Lady Damp-fart of Her-fart-shire. By Obadiah Fizzle, Groom of the Stool to the Princess of Arsimini in Sardinia. Long-Fart (Longford in Ireland): Printed by Simon Bumbubbad, at the Sign of the Wind-Mill opposite Twattling-Street.

The ladies will, I pray, direct their displeasure at Swift, not me. That unexpressed farts are the cause of bad moods a la femme is a calumny, though I once dated a stegosaurus who became a harridan while holding them in; she was a Lady who, as fine ladies often do, feared the social consequences of letting 'em rip in public. One need only read the book's A Certificate from the Court of the Princess Arsemini, and Miss V***e' F***s, in the Philippic Style to understand their anxiety.

While we're on the subject of A Woman Under the Influence of Flatulence, the movie that John Cassavetes dared not make, allow me to relate a story we often tell around the campfire:

Once upon a time, Gangolfus,  a Carolingian warrior-aristocrat from Burgundy later beatified, was married to an adulterous wife.

It came to pass that, while on a long journey, Gangolfus bought a piece of land graced with a pure spring. Upon his return, his shrewish spouse ridiculed his purchase because the spring was so distant from their home that it was useless to them.

In riposte, Gangolfus thrust a stick into the ground and, miraculously, water poured forth and a clear pond, exactly like the one he just had bought, came into being. Suspicious of his wife's lousy attitude, he suggested that she  dip her hand into the cool water. She did, and was scalded thereby betraying her adulteries. In revenge, her swain, a swinish priest, murdered Gangolfus.

Shortly afterward, God punished the evil ecclesiastic by gutting his entrails in the loo, the same death that took Judas the betrayer and Arius the heretic.

Miracles soon began to occur at the tomb of Gangolfus, a  sign of his sanctity in life. When news of the miracles reached his widow, she said, "If Gangolfus can work miracles, then so can my asshole!" 

As punishment for this wisecrack, God cursed her with violent flatulence whenever she spoke about the miracles of her dead husband. For the rest of her life her ass announced, in a malodorous, inflammable foghorn voice, his sainthood. Take that, wanton woman!

(I paraphrased this version from a review of Vita Gangolfi, Das Leben Gangolfs by Paul Dräger, found in Medieval Review, a journal I keep in the bathroom next to Primeval Quarterly).

Originally appearing in 1722, The Benefit of Farting Explain'd was reprinted in 1735 within a  miscellany including two other scatological works. It is a very rare book. The first edition has fallen under the hammer only twice within the last thirty six years, in 1980 and 2007; the same copy. The 1935 edition has not been seen at auction at all within the same period.

This lower intestinal tract has long been attributed to Swift but, according to him is was written by "one Dobbs, a surgeon." Yet to my Bronosaurian mind it's quite characteristically amusing, Swifty and sniffty. I suspect Swift dodged attribution.

Another book has recently wafted its way upon a scatological zephyr onto my bathroom's bookshelf and into my nostrils, An Essay Upon Wind by Charles James Fox, [London}: Printed on superfine pot-paper, at the Office of Peter Puffendorf, Potsdam, 1800. It opens with the following epigraph, courtesy of John Wilmont, 2d Earl of Rochester:

Perhaps such writing ought to be confined
In mere good breeding, like unsavory wind.
Were reading forced, I should be apt to think,
Men might no more write scurvily than stink:
But 'tis your choice whether you'll read or no;
If likewise of your smelling, it were so,
I'd fart, just as I write, for in my own ease,
Nor should you be concerned unless you please.

Fox dedicated his essay to the Lord Chancellor, Edward Thurlow: "I have heard from several of your brother peers, that your Lordship farts, without reserve, when seated upon the woolsack, in a full assembly of nobles… May your Lordship continue to fart like an ancient Grecian for many years…" (I should point out that Fox, a Whig statesman, had, in 1783, formed a coalition government and sacked Thurlow as Lord Chancellor; this was his parting shot).

Fox anticipates a strong headwind from his audience, as I do:  "I think I hear the CURIOUS reader exclaim, 'Heavens! That the brain of a man should be set to work on such cursed nonsense - such damned low stuff as farting; he ought to be ashamed of straining his dull facilities to such a nasty, absorb subject. But to PRINT his THOUGHTS upon farting, and to dedicate his dirty lucubrations to the Lord Chancellor, is the height of all human impudence and folly.'"

He then treats the variations of flatulence:

"I take it there are five or six different species of farts, and which are perfectly distinct from each other, both in weight and smell. First, the sonorous and full-toned, or rousing fart; Second, the double fart; Third, the soft fizzing fart; fourth, the wet fart; and Fifth, the sullen wind-bound fart."

It's Fartapalooza.

As long as we're relieving ourselves, I would be remiss to not mention another scatological tract once published with a reprint of  Swift-Dobbs' Benefits,  A Curious Dissertation on Pissing; Written by Piss-A-Bed Scat-Her-Water, Countess of Piss-in-Ford, and Lady of the Manor of Piss-Pot-Hall. 

Now, Mama brontosaurus, bless her, had a weak bladder since childhood, and, way too often, during seasonal migrations, she forced us all to stop by the side of the road so she could empty herself. I can't say that all women have urinary issues but it's probably no coincidence that incontinence pads are almost exclusively marketed to them. If Ma only had them back then...

Mama brontosaurus always lit a match when she farted, the smell of sulphur, to her nose, canceling-out digestive gas, though the rest of us disagreed, so much so that when she cut the cheese and prepared to strike a match, we ran, dug a hole, and waited for things to blow over. The prospect of the Earth's atmosphere igniting in a planetary conflagration and snuffing-out all life was too much to bear. Talk about global warming!

__________

[SWIFT, Jonathan, attributed to]. The Benefit of Farting Explain’d: Or, The Fundament-All Cause of the Distempers incident to the Fair-Sex, enquired into. Proving á Posteriori most of the Dis-ordures In tail’d upon them, are owing to Flatulen-cies not seasonably vented. Wrote in Spanish by Don Fartinando Puff-indorst’, Professor of Bumbast in the University of Crackow. And Translated into English at the Request, and for the Use, of the Lady Damp-fart of Her-fart-shire. By Obadiah Fizzle, Groom of the Stool to the Princess of Arsimini in Sardinia. Long-Fart (Longford in Ireland): Printed by Simon Bumbubbad, at the Sign of the Wind-Mill opposite Twattling-Street, 1722 reprinted 1735).  12mo. 16 pp.

Rothchild 2225. Teerink 905.Terink 19 (note). Watt, Bibliotheca Britannica Vol II, p. 890p.

[ANONYMOUS]. A Curious Dissertation on Pissing; Written by Piss-A-Bed Scat-Her-Water, Countess of Piss-in-Ford, and Lady of the Manor of Piss-Pot-Hall. To which is added, The Benefit of Farting or the Fundament-All Cause of the Distempers incident to the Fair Sex enquir’d into: [N.p., n.p.]: 1787. First edition. 12mo. 36 pp.

FOX, Charles James. An Essay Upon Wind; with curious anecdotes of eminent peteurs. Humbly dedicated to the Lord Chancellor. [London}: Printed on superfine pot-paper, at the Office of Peter Puffendorf, Potsdam, 1800.  Limited to 50 copies. Octavo. 56 pp.
ESTC N009441.

__________

Images courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Medusa in the Kidneys, 1608

by Stephen J. Gertz

I write between bouts of agony.

How does it feel?
How does it feel?
To have pain all your own
Life as one plaintive groan
All equipoise blown
An unyielding moan
In the torture zone
Like a kidney stone.

Benjamin Franklin, Isaac Newton, and Peter the Great had them. Francis Bacon, Louis Napoleon III, Lyndon Johnson. and Samuel Pepys endured them. Oliver Cromwell, Michel de Montaigne, Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XIV, and George IV experienced them. And so have Joe Schmo from Kokomo and Jane Doe from Boise, Idaho. In a town without pity kidney stones are the pits.

It's like waking up to see Medusa staring at you and, soon, your body begins to turn to stone, first stop, petrified kidneys, nephrolithiasis. It's the Granite State with apologies to New Hampshire.

So, when last week I experienced a boulder on the way to the bladder and stuck, I consulted my geologist, Dr. Gravelstein. He gave me a bottle of Vicodin, Flomax to keep the pipes open and urine flowin', and a rare book with orders to take the Vike as necessary for pain, drink plenty of fluids, and read the tome, TID.

Johann Georg Schenck's Lithogenesia sive de microcosmi membris petrefactis (1608), is the first book on petrifaction in and of parts of the human body, including gallstones, kidney stones, and  (drumroll, cymbal-crash) petrified immature fetuses in the uterus.

(As bizarre - and horrific for the bearer - as that sounds, I recently viewed a rerun of Law & Order Criminal Intent in which a woman carried the secret of her petrified fetus inside her womb for decades, leading her long-term boyfriend on with a story that her child was alive but seriously ill and institutionalized. He murders for money to support her non-existent daughter's care. Detective Goren builds a rock-solid case).

One of the engraved plates in its first and only edition depicts a thirty-seven year old woman from Sens who carried  a petrified fetus for years. In my imagination and pain I felt as if a petrified fetus was gestating in a ureter and very angry.

Calculi, or stones.

Johann-Georg Schenck of Grafenberg (d. 1620) was born at Freiburg in Breisgrau, in the second half of the sixteenth century. The son of noted physician Johannes Schenck von Grafenberg (1530-1598), he was Stadt-physikus at Hagenau in Alsace, successfully practiced medicine, yet found time to write and edit books on medicine and botany. He was the author of the first bibliography of gynecology, Pinax autorum qui gynaecia seu muliebra ex instituto scriptis exoluerunt et illustrarunt (1606).

Celsus edition of 1657.

Kidney calculi have been around since at least, of course, the Stone Age. Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BC - c. 50 BC) wrote about them in De Medicina (editio princeps 1478), the first printed medical book.

The author, attended by Dr. Gravelstein and two sisters of mercy.
The pharmacist, at right, enters to the rescue with narcotics.

Renal colic, the umbrella term for the presentation of a stone - waves of excruciating spasms to the back, flank and abdomen as the ureter attempts to dislodge it, severe vagal syndrome vomiting, dizziness, sweating, excessive salivation - seems too innocent, as if all that's necessary is to be thrown over your mother's shoulder and patted on the back for comfort. Coliques nephretiques - the same thing - sounds much more exotic and, dosed with absinthe and opium, a perfectly civilized way to go insane with pain.

Though highly unorthodox, getting your kidneys thoroughly massaged, washed and rinsed is quite refreshing and therapeutic, particularly when performed by Dr. Gravelstein's comely RN, Shirley Kim. There is, however, a consequence to being kidney-washed. I'm now the Manchurian Candidate of nephrology, murderous around kidney pie, kidney beans, kidney-shaped swimming pools, anything kidney; surely an assassin. Me, not Shirley, my North Korean kidney-handler.

A Gal. A Glove. A Kidney Stone. Danny Fisher Was Down for the Count.

We close today with a snapshot at one of the great, apocryphal novels dealing with coliques nephretiques. Who can forget the best-selling schlockmeister's third book?

__________

SCHENCK, Johann Georg. Lithogenesia sive de microcosmi membris petrefactis: et de calculis eidem microcosmo per varias matricis innatis: pathologia historica, per theorian & autopsian demonstrata... Francofurti: Ex officina typographica Matthiae Beckeri, sumptibus viduae Theodori de Bry, & duorum ejus filiorum (printed by Matthias Becker for the widow of Theodor de Bry and his two sons), 1608. First (only) edition. Small quarto (192 x 155 mm). [14], 69, [7] pp. With engraved printer's device on title-page, fifteen small woodcut illustrations, and six full-page engravings.

Bibliotheca Osleriana 3933. Ferguson II, p. 332. Krivatsy 10403. Welcome I, 5830.

__________

Images of Schenck's Lithogenesia... courtesy of Antiquariat Forum, with our thanks.

Urodonal ad #1 (1920) courtesy of Amazon.

Urodonal ad #2 (1915) courtesy of CQOut, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Two Little Ladies, One Body: Meet the Biddenden Maids of the 12th Century

by Stephen J. Gertz

A Short But Concise Account of Elizabeth and Mary Chulkhurst
…Commonly Called the Biddenden Maids.
Tenterden, Kent: James Weston, 1811.

Born to parents of means in the year 1100, Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst - the Biddenden Maids - were joined at the hips and shoulders. They are considered to be one of the earliest genuine cases of conjoined twins on record.

"They were naturally very close friends, although they sometimes disagreed in minor matters, and had 'frequent quarrels, which sometimes terminated in blows'" (Anon. Antiquarian Repertory, vol. I. London: F Blyth,1775:17, as cited in Bondeson, J., The Biddenden Twins: A Curious Chapter in the History of Conjoined Twins, in Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine Volume 85 April 1992, p. 217).

Detail from above broadside.

In 1134, Mary died after a sudden illness. When it was proposed that Eliza be surgically separated from her dead sister, Eliza refused. "As we came together we will also go together." She died six hours later.

Upon their death, they left parcels of land in Biddenden to the church wardens of that parish, the annual rent for which was annually doled to the local poor. For many years, every Easter Sunday the Maid's charity distributed bread, cheese, and beer to the less fortunate. Ongoing for centuries,  by the early nineteenth century the Biddenden Twin's charity was distributing near 1000 Biddenden cakes and 300 quartern loaves of bread and cheese in proportion.

Plaster cast of an early biscuit stamp.

As reported in 1895, "the income now amounts to about £40, and, as may be supposed, such a sum is sufficient to put Biddenden into a state of festivity for one day in the year. Visitors from neighboring places flocked to the village, which was turned into a kind of fair after the services in the church had been celebrated…There are two distributions under the will of the united sisters. In the first place, 1,000 hard-baked rolls, each stamped with a representation of the foundresses of the feast, were distributed among the visitors who might be in want of refreshment. They are very durable, as they are hard as wood, and may be kept as curiosities for twenty years. It would take the same time to digest them if eaten….The ceremony finished, many of the visitors attempted to soften their cakes in Kentish ale, and passed the rest of the day in Old World conviviality. Biddenden then resumed the quietude which it will retain until the memory of its twin sisters is celebrated next Easter Day" (New York Times, June 6, 1895).

From the Antiquarian Repertory, Volume One.
London: F. Blyth, 1775:17.

There has been some question about whether the traditional story of the twins is apocryphal or authentic. The incidence of twins conjoined in two places, at hips and shoulders, is extremely rare and most teratologists dismiss the possibility. Later historians were of the opinion that if the Biddenden Maids lived at all it was during the 16th or 17th century.

Yet what was reported as conjoinment at the  hips and shoulders was, in all likelihood, simply  due to the custom of twins conjoined at the hips to walk with their  arms around each others' shoulders; they only appeared to be joined at that place, too.

The Biddenden Maids, Gentleman's Magazine, 1869.

As far as Mary and Eliza Chulkhurst living much later than the 12th century, "the Maids [are] not mentioned in any of the major teratological works of the 16th and 17th centuries, such as those by Aldrovandi, Liceti, Pare,Schenckius and others. Nor [are] they noticed in the Philosophical Transactions or any other British collection of teratological descriptions. This is an argument against the opinion that they lived in the 16th or 17th century, since most other remarkable monsters that reached maturity occasioned much publicity in the popular and scientific works of this period"  (Op cit Bondeson, p. 220).

Date unknown.

Further, "a medieval historical chronicle, the Chronicon Scotorum, tells us that in AD 1099, a woman gave birth to 'two children together, in this year, and they had but one body from the breast to the navel, and they were two girls'. In the Irish chronicle Annals of the Four Masters is an almost identical description, although the conjoined twin girls are stated to have been born in 1103; in the Annals of Clonmacnoise their year of birth is given as AD 1100. These ancient descriptions are unreliable in details and probably dependent on each other, but in spite of this, they add some credibility to the old tradition that the Biddenden Maids were really born in 1100" (Op cit Bondeson, p. 221).

Biddenden Maids' Biscuit, c. 1902.

We refer and defer to newspaperman, Dutton Peabody, who, when he learned the truth, responded to Ransom Stoddard, the putative Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

And when the legendary biscuit becomes a real jawbreaker, eat the legend.

__________

Broadside image courtesy of James Eaton of  Alastor Rare Books, currently offering this extreme rarity, with our thanks.

Image of 1902 biscuit courtesy of England: The Other Within. Analysing the English Collections at the Pitt Rivers Museum, with our thanks.
 __________
__________