BERT, Paul.

Paris: G. Masson,1874

8vo, 2 leaves, pp. 170, (1), 6 plates of Bert’s apparatus. Half-title. Original green printed wrappers (discoloured and dust-soiled), uncut. Small pale stain in upper margin almost throughout, otherwise a very good copy. Presentation copy, inscribed by Bert in the upper corner of the front wrapper: “M. Ranvier. Souvenir affectueux, P. Bert”, and with the stamp of the histology department of the Collège de France in the other corner.

FIRST EDITION IN BOOK FORM, offprinted from the Annales des Sciences Naturelles for April of the same year, of Bert’s first book on high and low pressure physiology, a précis of his monumental La Pression Barométrique which was then in production. This book contains the essence of some of his findings presented in full in his larger work. It may properly be described as an incunable of the new science of hyperbaric medicine. The recipient of the this copy, Louis Antoine Ranvier (1835–1922), was the foremost histologist in France in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He would have known Paul Bert well — Ranvier succeeded Bert as préparateur for Claude Bernard at the Collège de France, and both were teaching in Paris at the same time.

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