Ramazzini's study of the diseases of workers, De morbis artificium diatriba, was the first comprehensive and systematic treatise on occupational medicine; it was also the foundation work in ergonomics. It deals with pneumoconiosis and other diseases of miners, with lead poisoning in potters, with silicosis in stonemasons, diseases among metal workers, and even a chapter devoted to the “diseases of learned men", a chapter on diseases of printers, and of athletes. Ramazzini also discussed the occupational diseases of women, recommending that midwives practice cleanliness and take precautions against syphilitic infections. Ramazzini recognized that a number of workers’ diseases were caused by the taxing postures and repetitive motions required by professions such as shoemaking, tailoring and writing; he is thus considered a founder of ergonomics. He suggested ways to prevent these ailments.

Ramazzini's book was translated into English as A Treatise on the Diseases of Tradesmen (London, 1705). In 1713 Ramazzini expanded his text. This revised edition was reprinted with a parallel English translation by Wilmer Cave Wright and published as De Morbis Artificum Bernardini Ramazzini Diseases of Workers (1940). Through various Latin editions and translations into Italian, German, French and Dutch Ramazzini's book was also influential in the history of economics. The first French translation by the noted chemist, Fourcroy, Paris, 1777 contained significant additions. Digital facsimile of the 1703 second edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

Includes the earliest English description of drug addiction, and withdrawal. Jones attempted to use wine as a partial substitute until withdrawal was complete.

The first medical parasitology text– an exhaustive study of the parasites of man, the diseases associated with them and their treatment. Andry’s views were often ahead of his time. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he did not believe in the spontaneous generation of parasites but clearly stated that their seeds entered the body from outside sources and that some foods were particularly liable to contain them. English translation, London, 1701.

Amman’s method of instructing deaf-mutes. He was one of the most successful of all teachers in this sphere. English translation as A dissertation on speech. To which not only the human voice and the art of speaking are traced from their origin, but the means are also described by which those who have been deaf and dumb from their bith may acquire speech, and those wospeak imperfectly may learn how to corect their impediments. (London, 1873).

Page 68: first description of leontiasis ossea.

"Méry became closely associated with the comparative-anatomical work led by Claude Perrault and J.-G. Duverney. As a member of this group, Méry made contributions to their joint publications, in which each man’s specific contributions usually cannot be determined. Méry worked closely with Duverney until about 1693, when their differing interpretations of mammalian fetal circulation estranged them. The coolness that resulted was apparent to Martin Lister, when he visited Paris in 1698. Méry probably did more to retard than to aid the understanding of this problem. Méry claimed that the blood flowed from the left to the right through the foramen ovale in the interatrial septum. This view was prevalent enough that Haller look time to refute it. Méry initially formulated his theory from a false analogy between a tortoise heart and a fetal mammalian heart. Ultimately he based his theory of fetal circulation on a comparison of the cross sections of the pulmonary artery and the aorta, concluding that not all of the blood passing through the pulmonary artery and returning to the heart by the pulmonary vein could pass into the aorta. Instead, he thought, a portion of that blood passed through the foramen ovale from the left to the right side of the heart.

"Méry erred in assuming that the cross section of an artery is the only factor determining the amount of blood that can flow through it. He compounded this error by his method of measuring the relative cross sections of the arteries. He may have used fresh preparations for his measurements on cows and sheep. For those on human beings, he probably used preserved specimens, dried ones as a rule. The results were inconsistent at best. For example, Martin Lister described a fetal heart that he saw in Méry’s collection which had no valve for the foramen ovale, and which was open in both directions and had a diameter nearly equal to that of the aorta. For two decades numerous arguments were presented on both sides of the controversy between Méry’s views and the traditional views dating back to Harvey and Lower. Méry held his views against all opposition to the end" (DSB). See Kenneth J. Franklin, “Jean Méry (1645–1722) and His Ideas on the Foetal Blood Flow,” in Annals of Science, 5 (1945), 203–338.

Frère Jacques Beaulieu, the work of which the first part of Méry's book refers, was a notorious quack travelling lithotomist.

Probably the most original artist in the history of anatomical preparations, Ruysch enjoyed making up elaborate three-dimensional emblems of mortality from his specimens. These fantastic, dream-like concoctions constructed of human anatomical parts are illustrated in the Thesaurus on large folding plates mostly engraved by Cornelis Huyberts, who also engraved plates for the painter Girard de Lairesse, illustrator of Bidloo's anatomy. In their dreamlike qualities many of the plates depicting the preparations reflected surrealism centuries before surrealism became fashionable. Ruysch's Thesaurus Anatomicus describe and illustrate the spectacular collections of "Anatomical Treasures" which he produced for display in his home museum between 1701 and 1715 using secret methods of anatomical injection and preservation.

Ruysch's unique anatomical preparations attracted many notables to his museum, including Czar Peter the Great of Russia, who was so fascinated with the preparations that he attended Ruysch's anatomy lectures, and in 1717 he bought Ruysch's entire collection, along with that of the Amsterdam apothecary Albert Seba, for Russia's first public museum, the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer. Over the years most of the dry preparations in St. Petersburg deteriorated or disappeared, but some of those preserved in glass jars remain. A few later specimens by Ruysch, auctioned off by his widow after his death, are also preserved in Leiden. Because most of the preparations did not survive, Ruysch's preparations, and his museum, are known primarily from these publications.

Ruysch's methods allowed him to prepare organs such as the liver and kidneys and keep entire corpses for years. He used a mixture of talc, white wax, and cinnabar for injecting vessels and an embalming fluid of alcohol made from wine or corn with black pepper added. Using his injection methods Ruysch was the first to demonstrate the occurrence of blood vessels in almost all tissues of the human body, thereby destroying the Galenic belief that certain areas of the body had no vascular supply. He was also the first to show that blood vessels display diverse organ-specific patterns. He investigated the valves in the lymphatic system, the bronchial arteries and the vascular plexuses of the heart, and was the first to point out the nourishment of the fetus through the umbilical cord. Ruysch's discoveries led him to claim erroneously that tissues consisted solely of vascular networks, and to deny the existence of glandular tissue.

A list of officially recognized drugs, with a classification of useless and undesirable ones. Rivinus also noted incompatibles. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

This work gives the first accurate description of the female pelvis and its deformities, and the effect of the latter in complicating labor. The first edition contains a relatively unattractive frontispiece portrait of the author, engraved by himself. Latin translation, Leiden, 1701. English translation, London, 1724.

A history of cold bathing.

Stahl was the first to treat lacrimal fistula on the basis of correct anatomical understanding. He described his treatment in an addendum to the thesis on eye disease of his student, Lange.

Mead performed numerous experiments, including tests with viper venom which lead to his book on poisons. His book describes their effects on the body in accordance with the precepts of the Iatrophysical School, which claimed that all physiologic and pathologic phenomena were the result of the laws of physics. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

A library of chemical and alchemical works, including various alchemical works (some illustrated) that were already rare by Manget's time. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

A study of the most remarkabl diseases mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Travels in Netherlands, France, Savoy, and Piedmont. A second volume containing records of tours in Italy, and a third containing tous in Germany, Hunary, Denmark and Sweden, were planned but were never published.

Martin, who graduated MD from Leiden, included throughout his book detailed and non-judgmental documentation of folk medicine practices and ethnobotanic remedies then in use in the region. Digital facsimile of the 1703 edition from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Translated into English as Emmenologia: Written, in Latin, by the late learned Dr. John Freind. Translated into English by Thomas Dale, M.D. London: Printed for T. Cox, 1729. 

Digital facsimile of the 1752 English translation from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

(Thanks to Webb Dordick for this reference.)

Baglivi, Professor of Anatomy at Rome, had a short but brilliant career. He wrote Praxis medica and De fibra motrice, and originated the so-called “solidar” pathology; he also devoted much time to experimental physiology. Baglivi was a strong advocate of specialism.

Valsalva, a pupil of Malpighi and teacher of Morgagni, is best remembered for his work upon the ear, in which he described and depicted its most minute muscles and nerves. He divided the ear into “external”, “middle”, and “internal”; his method of inflating the middle ear (Valsalva’s maneuver) is still practiced. The book includes a description of “Valsalva’s dysphagia”.

Of particular value for reprinting many early museum catalogues. The second edition issued in 1714 reissued the first volume together with a second and third volume.  Digital facsimile of the 1704 first edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

Mead formulated the position that periodic atmospheric tides arising from planetary forces produced alterations of gravity, elasticity, and air pressure; these changes, he argued, affected the human body in health and disease. Mesmer's disseration, which originated animal magnetism, was largely a plagiarism of Mead's work. Translated into English by Thomas Stack "under the author's inspection" as A treatise concerning the influence of the sun and moon upon human bodies, and the diseases thereby produced (London, 1748).

Digital facsimile of the 1704 edition from Google Books at this link, of the English translation at this link. See Frank A. Pattie, "Mesmer's medical dissertation and its debt to Mead's De imperio solis ac lunae," Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences, (1956) 275-287. 

The first English book on the power of exercise in treating disease. Fuller also recommended exercise for aid in the recovery from psychological and emotional disorders. In this he preceded Cheyne (No. 4840).

Includes a description and illustration of the Pacchionian bodies of the arachnoid tissue under the dura, producing by pressure slight depressions (“Pacchionian depressions”). See also Pacchioni’s De durae meningis fabrica et usu disquisitio anatomica (Rome: D.A. Herculis, 1701). Digital facsimile of the 1701 work from Google Books at this link.

Vieussens was among the first to describe the morbid changes in mitral stenosis, the throbbing pulse in aortic insufficiency, and the first correctly to describe the structure of the left ventricle, the course of the coronary vessels and the valve in the large coronary vein. He was the first to diagnose thoracic aneurysm during the life of the patient. Vieussens included a classic description of the symptoms of aortic regurgitation in his book. Partial English translation in No. 2241. Digital facsimile from the Medical Heritage Library, Internet Archive, at this link.

Petit was the first director of the Académie de Chirurgie, Paris. He is particularly remembered for his work on bone diseases. He invented the screw tourniquet, gave the first account of osteomalacia, and was first to open the mastoid process. New edition entitled Traité des maladies des os, 2 vols., 1723; English translation of latter, 1726. See Nos. 3357 & 3577.

First description of aortic insufficiency. Reproduced in Willius & Keys: Cardiac classics, 1941, pp. 109-14.

The first description of “Vieussen’s valve,” “Vieussens’s ring,” and the “Thebesian veins” of the heart. "These ‘ducti carnosi’ were ultimately named ‘Thebesian veins’ after subsequent work completed by Adam Christian Thebesius just two years after Vieussens’s publication. Vieussens's 1706 work also included a description of the valve of the coronary vein known now as Vieussens’s valve—of clinical significance during placement of biventricular pacing leads—as well as a description of a conus branch of the right coronary artery circling around the aorta to the left arterial system providing a source of collateral flow known as Vieussens’s ring” (Jeremy Parker). 

Catalogue of the collection of natural history commenced by Anthony Breda and considerably enriched and expanded by his brother-in-law Levinus Vincent, a merchant of luxurious textiles. Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

The Nabothian cysts and glands of the cervix uteri first described (sect. xv).

Before watches had hands to record the seconds, Floyer invented a pulse-watch which divided the minute. He was the first to count the pulse with the aid of a watch and to make regular observations on the pulse-rate. The second volume contains the first English translation of Cleyer’s book on Chinese pulse-lore, Specimen medicinae Sinicae. (see No. 6492).

In the above work Lancisi noted cardiac hypertrophy and dilatation as causes of sudden death. He was the first to describe valvular vegetation, and his book gives a classification of the cardiac diseases then recognized. Lancisi’s work laid the foundation for a true understanding of cardiac pathology. There are three different states of the title page of this work, with no definite order of priority established. See P. Kligfield, "Survey of variant title page vignettes in Lancisi’s De subitaneis mortibus," J. Hist. Med. & all. Sci., 1983, 38, 336-39. English translation by P.D. White & AV. Boursy, New York, St. John’s University Press, [1971.]

A renowned specialist and pupil of Bellini, Alghisi was probably the first to use an indwelling urethral catheter to drain urine away from the wound after lithotomy. The inclined position of the patient with the head raised during the operation was also adopted from him. Illustrated with fine copperplates.

In his preface Drake credited the surgeon, anatomist and artist, William Cowper, for valuable aid in both the text and illustrations this work. Drake also included a chapter, "Of the Nose" written by Cowper which described the operation Cowper pioneered to empty the surgical treatment of diseases of the maxillary sinus. “In order to empty Highmore’s antrum of deposits and to be able to carry out the necessary irrigations, he extracted in most cases the first permanent molar, and then penetrated through its aveolus into the sinus with a pointed instrument” (Guerini).

Dionis taught operative surgery at the Jardin-du-Roi, Paris, a famous training ground for surgeons. English translation, London, 1710.

Called “the Father of French ophthalmology”, Maître-Jan energetically supported Brisseau’s doctrine, ensuring its acceptance. As far back as 1692, Maître-Jan had proved that the opaque lens is cataract, but before Brisseau’s work appeared it had been regarded as a sort of skin or pellicle immediately inside the capsule of the lens.

As a youth Sloane collected objects of natural history and other curiosities. This led him to the study of medicine, which he went to London, where he studied botany, materia medica, surgery and pharmacy. His collecting habits made him useful to John Ray and Robert Boyle. After four years in London he travelled through France, spending some time at Paris and Montpellier, and stayed long enough at the University of Orange-Nassau to take his MD degree there in 1683. He returned to London with a considerable collection of plants and other curiosities, of which the former were sent to Ray and utilised by him for his History of Plants.

In 1687 Sloane became a fellow of the College of Physicians, and the same year went to Jamaica aboard HMS Assistance as physician in the suite of the new Governor of Jamaica, the second Duke of Albemarle.Jamaica was fast emerging as a source of immense profit to British merchants based on the cultivation of sugar and other crops by the forced labor of West Africans—many from the Akan and other peoples of the regions which the English entitled the Gold and Slave Coasts. Income from the sugar produced by enslaved African laborers on Sloane's wife's plantations at an area known as Sixteen Mile Walk fed the family fortunes in London and, together with Sloane's medical revenue and London property investments, gave him the wealth to collect on a vast scale. On his death Sloane bequeathed his collections to the English nation, founding the British Museum. (adapted from the Wikipedia article on Hans Sloane, 03-2018).

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

"As for the comparative part of this treatise, or the interlacing the descriptions of the human muscles with these of the canine, that needs no apology. The many useful discoveries known from the dissection of quadrupeds, the knowledge of the true structure of divers parts of the body, of the course of the blood and the chyle, and of the use and proper action of the parts, that are chiefly owing to this sort of dissection; these, I say, give a very warrantable plea for insisting upon it, tho' it may be censured by the vulgar" (p. vi).

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Institutiones medicae, Boerhaave’s first book, represented lectures given by Boerhaave on June 23, 1701; it was soon being used in virtually every medical school in Europe, going though numerous authorized and unauthorized editions and translations. It was one of the earliest modern textbooks of physiology, and was responsible, more than any other work, for establishing the study of physiology as an academic discipline. Boerhaave wrote the work to serve as the textbook for his course in the institutes of medicine, a discipline including pathology, symptoms, hygiene and therapeutics as well as physiology, but he apparently felt that physiology was a neglected subject in the curriculum, as his chapter on it was larger than the other four chapters combined, and the only one to contain footnotes. The Institutiones is also significant as a work of medical bibliography, introducing its readers to the medical literature of the past and present through Boerhaave’s numerous detailed bibliographical citations. Because of its unusually large number of book recommendations, Boerhaave's extremely influential text may have influenced many of his students to collect libraries of the works which he deemed classical and significant. That some books might have been printed a century or more before the lectures were given does not seem to have been a critical issue. Lindeboom, Bibliographia Boerhaaviana (1959) No. 40. Lindeboom lists 50 different editions and translations of this work, including a manuscript translation into Arabic made in 1733.

The work was translated into English by "Mr. Samber" and published in London in 1719 under the following title: A Method of Studying Physick. Containing What a Physician ought to know in Relation to the Nature of Bodies, the Laws of Motion; Staticks, hydrostaticks, Hydraulicks, and the Proprieties of Fluids: Chymistry, Pharmacy and Botany: Osteology, Myology, Splanchnology, Angiology and Dissection: The Theory and Practice of Physick: Physiology, Pathology, Surgery, Diet, &c. And the whole Praxis Medica Interna; with the Names and Characters of the Most excellent Authors on all these several Subjects in every Age: Systematicks, Observators, Operators, & their best Editions, and the method of reading them.  

Stahl tried to explain vital phenomena by mystical means. He was the head of the so-called Animistic School which explained disease as caused by misdirected activities on the part of the soul. A three-volume German translation of the above was published in Berlin in 1831-33.

First description of the coronary valves and the venae thebesii.

This reprint of Culpeper’s popular work on herbal remedies was the first medical book (94pp.) printed in North America.

The only significantly illustrated early book on medicine in Hebrew. This is an encyclopedia, of which approximately half concerns medicine. One of the first Jews from the Eastern ghetto to obtain a medical education at a German university, Cohn completed his degree at Padua, and served as court physician to the Turkish Sultan.

Keill applied measurement and mathematics in his researches, claiming the "first calculations of the absolute velocity at which blood travels through the aorta and smaller vessels; he also recognized that the blood's velocity must decrease the number of arterial branches increases. Keill would also appear to have been one of the first to study the ratio of the bluid to the solid portions of the body, partly through experiments involving tissue desiccation" (DSB, 7, 274).

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

The Aphorisms represent one of Boerhaave’s best  and most influential works. English translation, 1715.

Brisseau was the first to demonstrate the true nature and location of cataract. His book was reprinted in facsimile, 1921.

Lawson, who characterized himself as "Surveyer-General of North Carolina" explored the interior of colonial North Carolina, South Carolina and George. He was guided by American Indians and made careful note of vegetation, wildlife and many Indian tribes he encountered. His book, which underwent several editions and translations, attracted many immigrants to the region.

"In September 1711, Lawson and his associate Christopher von Graffenried were captured by Tuscarora Indians while ascending the Neuse River. The Tuscarora released von Graffenried, but they subjected Lawson to ritual torture, typical of warriors, and killed him.^[1] Shortly thereafter, tensions between the Tuscarora and their allies and settlers erupted into a bloody conflict known as the Tuscarora War, lasting until the defeat of the Tuscarora in 1715. The colonists gathered their own American Indian allies, especially from among the Yamasee and Cherokee, traditional enemies and competitors of the Tuscarora" (Wikipedia article on John Lawson (explorer) accessed 4-2020).

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Extensively illustrated catalogue by Bonanni of the Musaeum Kircherianum, formed in the mid-17th century by the Jesuit polymath, Athanasius Kircher, and housed in the Jesuit Collegio Romano. Reflective of Kircher's polymathic interests, the museum included objects of every kind from many disciplines: antiquities, archaeology, ethnography, natural history, etc., and also included a number of mathematical, scientific, and physical instruments. Components of Kircher's museum were later dispersed to various other museums in Rome, leaving this book as the only record of its contents. Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.