PLATTER, Felix - Lot 15

PLATTER, Felix De corporis humani structura et usu libri III Ambrosium Frob, [Basel] Ex officina Frobeniana, 1583. Two parts in one volume, in-4°, full vellum. 3 ff. Unencrypted, 197 pp. 2 ff. second title page Liber tertius and 50 plates with paginated explanatory text opposite each plate (50 pp.). Text pages 27/28 and 29/30 are missing at the beginning of the volume. (Persistent staining in lower corner. Worm gallery from plate 34 to plate 50 in the lower margin, without affecting the figures). FIRST EDITION of Platter's first book. A disciple of Eustachi, Falloppio and Vesalius, Platter was one of the leading pathologists of the 16th and early 17th centuries, occupying a position midway between Fernel (1497-1558) and Bonet (1620-89). Platter is credited with over 300 dissections during his 57-year medical career, an astonishing figure given that obtaining cadavers was severely restricted by ecclesiastical and secular authorities at the time. According to the diary he kept as a medical student in Montpellier, Platter even plundered tombs to further his research. He was probably the first to practice anatomopathology, noting during post-mortem examinations that certain diseases seemed to be caused by anatomical anomalies. Handwritten bookplate of François Rasse des Neux (c.1525 1587), surgeon to Catherine de Médicis and 16th-century scholar, at the bottom of the first title page: Franciscus Rassius Noëns chirurgus Parisiensis (Paris) et Reg. 1583 .