HARDY, Alfred, & A. de MONTMÉJA.

Paris: H. Lauwereyns… 1882

4to, 2 leaves (half-title and title), pp. iii, 128, and 60 woodburytype photographs by Montméja, many partially hand-coloured, mounted on printed cards. Foxing on the text leaves (heavier on the first and last few leaves) with light offsetting on the card mounts. Recent brown cloth, brown morocco label, t.e.g.

THIRD AND BEST EDITION, with 60 plates (there were 50 in the first edition) and using, as Montméja says in the preface, recent improvements in photographic technique. This was the first French dermatological book to be illustrated with photographs. Montméja was a former army surgeon and head of the ophthalmology clinic at the Hôpital Saint-Louis. He learned photography specifically for Hardy’s project and set up a special studio for the purpose. Each image is accompanied by Hardy’s text describing the condition. Hardy, professor of clinical medicine at the faculty of medicine in Paris, was the last of the group comprising the French school which developed modern clinical dermatology, “…a fact of the first importance in the history of modern dermatology” (Pusey, p. 85). See G&M 6872 for the first edition of 1867–1868, issued in parts with a slightly different title. Pusey, The history of dermatology, pp. 83–85.

Unsure of some of these terms? Click here to download a copy of Carter & Barker, ABC for Book Collectors (2006), which has full explanations.