VESALIUS, Andreas.

London: Privately printed for Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 1874

Large folio (505 x 662 mm.), 14 leaves (including the first and last blank, the other 12 printed on the rectos only). Four leaves printed in red and black. Contemporary Continental marbled boards, purple roan spine. Lower joint split at top, corners and edges a little worn. otherwise a good copy.

A fine facsimile, chronologically the second edition, of Vesalius’s first anatomical book, printed in a very small edition: “Of this gorgeously printed volume, as Stirling-Maxwell states, 30 copies were struck off, one on vellum, one on parchment, and 28 on paper” (Cushing). It comprises five preliminary leaves, a portrait of Vesalius, and facsimiles of the six separate leaves of anatomical drawings originally published in 1538. The original edition is known in a tiny handful of copies (Cushing positively located only two copies). Cushing, Bio-bibliography, II.-2[B]. Cockx-Indestege, Andreas Vesalius. a Belgian census, 4 (records two copies, both presentation from Stirling-Maxwell, one in a similar binding to the present copy).

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