“First extensive work on the comparative anatomy of vertebrates” (Casey Wood).

Following Vater’s classic description of the ampulla of the bile duct, it was named the “ampulla of Vater”.

The first herbal printed in North America, and the first full-length medical book published in North America. From the 1653 London edition.

Marten believed that an infectious micro-organism was the cause of tuberculosis, thus forecasting the existence of the tubercle bacillus 162 years before its actual discovery. Though Leeuwenhoek reported seeing bacteria in 1676 he did not believe that his "little animals" caused disease. Martin wrote that tuberculosis may be caused by "wonderfully minute living creatures" that could lead to the lesions symptomatic of the disease, thereby expressing the theory of contagium vivum or 'living contagion'. He went on to state that "it may be therefore very likely that by a habitual lying in the same bed with a consumptive patient, constantly eating and drinking with him, or by very frequently conversing so nearly as to draw in part of the breath he emits from the lungs, a consumption may be caught by a sound person...I imagine that slightly conversing with consumptive patients is seldom or never sufficient to catch the disease."

Douglas accused Cheselden of plagiarizing his work, although the latter had acknowledged his indebtedness to Douglas. It is possible that this was the reason which prompted Cheselden to drop the high operation in favor of lateral lithotomy.

In 1719 Mead was asked for advice concerning an outbreak of plague in Marseilles, and replied with the above tract of 59 pages, which has been called the first epidemiological report produced by a physician at the command of the state. It underwent seven editions in one year. By the eighth edition (1722) Mead expanded it into a book of 150 pages. Mead concluded that isolation of the sick is more effective in stopping the spread of infection than general quarantine or fumigation. The book has been called almost a prophecy of what was to develop as the English public health system.

"Little is known of Albin’s early life, though he was probably born in Germany to a family named Weiss. By 1708 he had changed his surname to Albin and was living in London with his family. His profession of art teacher led him to the close observation of the natural world, reinforced by painting work which he undertook for the naturalist Joseph Dandridge (1665–1747), who collected insects and observed their metamorphosis from egg to fly. He also drew natural-history subjects for Sir Hans Sloane, before gaining the patronage of the Dowager Duchess of Beaufort, who encouraged him to compose the present work. An advertisement went out in about 1713 entitled 'Proposals for Printing by subscription a natural history of English insects', but the first edition did not materialise until 1720, owing chiefly to the early death of the Dowager Beaufort and the slow rate of subscriptions. Albin prided himself on his visual accuracy, stating in his introduction that his drawings were copied after life, unlike those of other illustrators, who "either did not look often enough at their Pattern, or affected to make the Picture outdo Nature". The work was published with black and white copper plates, which could be coloured on request by the author. His description of the cabbage white includes all stages of its life cycle, from caterpillar via chrysalis to butterfly, what they like to eat, and how to control them. Albin’s publication was supported by his circle of patrons and colleagues – members of the Beaufort family, Joseph Dandridge and Hans Sloane – as well as by Caroline, Princess of Wales, to whom the work was dedicated. William Derham, the editor, was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the first to measure the speed of sound with reasonable accuracy. Text adapted from The First Georgians; Art and Monarchy 1714 - 1760, London, 2014" (https://www.rct.uk/collection/1057018/a-natural-history-of-english-insects, accessed 12-2021).

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

An abridgement of Nos. 5409 & 5410 together with Boylston’s remarks. From internal evidence this 24-page pamphlet would appear to be the first North American publication on inoculation. See No. 5415. Digital facsimile of the incomplete U.S. NLM copy from the Internet Archive at this link.

This work offers general support for the practice of Zabdiel Boylston, detailing some of Boylston’s cases, including accounts of occasions when patients died. Reprinted with additional material by Daniel Neal, as A narrative of the method and success of inoculating the small-pox in New England, by Mr. Benj. Colman…London, 1722.

Mauquest de la Motte applied podalic version to head presentations. English translation, prepared at the suggestion of William Smellie, 1746.

Attributed to William Beckett by OCLC. Digital facsimile of the 1721 second edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

Gaudereau worked as a missionary in Turkey, Armenia, Persia, and India, facing plague outbreaks several times. In Turkey he almost succumbed to the plague, himself, but was cured using local remedies. These remedies and other local precautions to avoid the disease he reported in this book.

A compilation of mostly complete surgical treatises, representing what Manget considered an essential surgical library of then-modern as well as classical texts-- a surgical library in 4 large volumes. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Numerous editions and translations of the catalogue of the anatomical museum of the University of Leiden were published, probably to supply the needs of medical students from various countries. Digital facsimile of the 1738 Latin edition at this link. The work was translated into English as A catalogue of all the chiefest rarities in the publick Anatomie-Hall, of the University of Leiden, by Francis Schuyl. (Leiden: Diewertje vander Boxe, 1732). Digital facsimile of the 1732 English translation from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

This reprints Valentini’s Pandectae medico legales (1701) and Novellae medico-legales (1711) with the addition of Authentica iatro-forensia.

Records the removal of a cataract “en masse” from a living subject. English edition, 1741. Digital facsimile of the 1722 edition from Biu Santé at this link.

Douglass at first opposed inoculation for smallpox, but by 1730 he had changed his views and had become an advocate of inoculation.

Mather republished reports of earlier writers on inoculation. He persuaded Boylston to adopt the practice in June 1721, and he supported Boylston during a period of great opposition to inoculation.

Maitland inoculated the children of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in 1721, and also inoculated six condemned prisoners as part of the so-called “Royal Experiment”. Success with these trials lead to his inoculation of the children of the Prince of Wales, and to the popularization of inoculation in England.

Though he may be most widely remembered as a novelist--especially for Robinson Crusoe, Defoe was an English trader, writer of non-fiction as well as fiction, journalist, pamphleteer and spy.  This book is an account of one man's experiences in 1665, the year in which the bubonic plague struck London. Published under the initials H.F., Daniel Defoe, who was only five years old in 1665, may have based it on the journals of his uncle, Henry Foe. "Whether the Journal can properly be regarded as a novel has been disputed.^[1] It was initially read as a work of non-fiction,^[2] but by the 1780s the work's fictional status was accepted. Debate continued as to whether Defoe could be regarded as the work's author rather than merely its editor.^[2] One modern literary critic has asserted that 'the invented detail is... small and inessential', while Watson Nicholson – writing in 1919 – argued that the work can be regarded as 'authentic history'.^[3] Other literary critics have argued that the work can indeed be regarded as a work of imaginative fiction, and thus can justifiably be described as a 'historical novel' (Wikipedia article on A Journal of the Plague Year, accessed 04-2018). Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Probably the first psychiatric self-help book. Hunter and Macalpine call Mandeville's work "the first book on minor mental maladies `writ by way of Information to Patients' rather than `to teach other Practitioners' . . . [Mandeville] gave a graphic account of his own attack of melancholy when he developed the delusion that he had syphilis" (Hunter & Macalpine, p. 296). Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Jurin was an enthusiastic supporter of inoculation against smallpox, and proved statistically that the fatality of inoculated smallpox is very much less than the fatality of natural smallpox. This is one of the earliest applications of statistics to a particular socio-medical problem. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Cheselden was surgeon to St. Thomas’s Hospital and an outstanding figure in British surgery in the first half of the 18th century. The above work describes his method of performing suprapubic lithotomy, a method which he abandoned in 1727 for the lateral operation. Includes an English translation of Rousset on suprapubic lithotomy, from his book on caesarean section (No. 6236). Rousset laid out the basic principles of the operation although he did not perform it on a living subject. Biography of Cheselden by Sir Zachary Cope, 1953.

Santorini was one of the ablest dissectors of his day. In the above work many new discoveries of anatomical details are set forth, together with corrections of some of the errors of earlier anatomists. The work describes the four major discoveries for which Santorini is known eponymically: Santorini’s cartilage, Santorini’s vein, Santorini’s duct, and Santorini’s caruncula.

This work made a modest first appearance in 1694 as an octavo, but Cowper worked until his death on a new edition which was finally published posthumously under the supervision and at the expense of Richard Mead (1673-1754). This sumptuous folio with engravings after Rubens and Raphael and an ingenious set of historiated initials, ranks among the most artistic anatomical atlases of the period.

The first English book devoted to gerontology. Digital facsimile of the second edition (1725) from the Internet Archive at this link.

Guyot, postmaster at Versailles, also physician, cartographer, inventor, etc., was the first to attempt catheterization of the Eustachian tube. This he did by way of the mouth.

Authorship of this early English account of Servetus and his martyrdom for heresy has never been determined, according to Geoffrey Sill, "The authorship of An impartial history of Michael Servetus," Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 87, 303-318. Sill indicates that a very few copies of this work exist with the title page dated 1723. Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Boerhaave's syndrome: complete, transmural laceration of the lower part of oesophagus with exit of the gastric content into the mediastinum in the patient with a pre-existing oesophageal disease. This typically occurs after forceful emesis. Boerhaave described this syndrome in the context of a patient he treated in 1723--Baron Jan von Wassenaer, Grand Admiral of the Dutch Fleet and Prefect of Rhineland, who vomited after a meal and developed left-sided chest pain and died 18 hours later. At post mortem the following were found: a tear of the left posterior wall of the oesophagus 5 cm above the diaphragm, emphysema, and food in the left pleural space.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

De Moivre, French Huguenot mathematician and demographer, formulated the hypothesis that among a body of persons over a certain age the successive annual decreases by death are nearly equal.

A work covering the whole field of medical jurisprudence as then understood, and ranking in importance with the work of Valentini. The first supplement was published in Halle, 1733. The much-expanded second edition, including the first supplement, was published in Halle in 6 vols., 1733-47.

Freind was the first English historian of medicine, and his book is a classic study of the period with which it treats. Freind dabbled in politics and planned the above work while committed to the Tower of London on a charge of high treason, a charge of which he was innocent. Sir Robert Walpole, Prime Minister at the time, suffered much from renal calculi and called in Richard Mead, a great friend of Freind. Mead refused to treat Walpole until Freind was released, and this was speedily arranged!

Vesalius's collected works with the famous woodcuts reproduced as copperplate engravings by Jan Wandelaar (1690-1759). Notably Boerhaave and Albinus had this edition published because Vesalius's works still had practical value for physicians early in the 18th century before the application of microscopy to anatomy. Digital facsimile from ECHO, Cultural Heritage Online at this link.

The first book devoted entirely to marine science and the first oceanographic study of a single region. Marsigli conducted an intensive investigation of the Gulf of Lyon in the south of France, taking soundings to obtain a profile of the sea floor, analyzing the relationship of the lands under and above water, studying the water's physical properties (temperature, density, color) and its motions (waves, curents tides), and describing the marine life of the region. He was the first to class corals as living beings rather than as inorganic mineral formations. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Marsigli published the essence of his marine biology observations in Brieve ristretto de saggio fisico interno alla storia del mare. Venice: Andrea Poletti, 1711. Digital facsimile of the 1711 work from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Houstoun was the first to treat ovarian edema by tapping the cyst, 1701. For biographical note, see J. Obst. Gynaec. Brit. Comw., 1973, 80, 193-200.

Boylston was the first in America to inoculate for smallpox, at Boston on 26 June 1721. 

"During a smallpox outbreak in 1721 in Boston, he inoculated about 248 people^[5] by applying pus from a smallpox sore to a small wound on the subjects, a method said to have been previously used in Africa. Initially, he used the method on two slaves and his own son, who was 13 at the time. This was the first introduction of inoculations to the United States. An African slave named Onesimus taught the idea to Cotton Mather, the influential New England Puritan minister.

"His method was initially met by hostility and outright violence from other physicians, and many threats were made on his life, with some even threatening to hang him on the nearest tree. He was forced to hide in a private place of his house for 14 days, a secret known only by his wife. During this hostility, his family was also in a dangerous situation. His wife and children were sitting in their home and a lighted hand-grenade was thrown into the room, but the fuse fell off before an explosion could take place. Even after the violence had subsided, he visited his patients only at midnight and while disguised.^[6] After his initial inoculations of his son and two slaves, he was arrested for a short period of time for it (he was later released with the promise not to inoculate without government permission). In 1724, with a letter of introduction to Dr. James Jurin by Cotton Mather^[7] , Boylston traveled to London, where he published his results as Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England, and became a fellow of the Royal Society two years later. Afterward, he returned to Boston" (Wikipedia article on Zabdiel Boylston, accessed 03-2018).

The second edition was published in Boston in 1730. Digital facsimile of the second edition preserved in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, from the Internet Archive at this link.

During 1710 Boerhaave lectured on the Methodus discendi medicinam. In 1726 the first edition was published from notes taken at his lectures but without his permission. Lindeboom, Bibliographia Boerhaaviana (1959) No. 91, describes this edition as having 457pp., with one figure, but does not name a publisher. Another edition with 458pp. was issued by J. F. Bernard in Amsterdam, also in 1726, and a third printing appeared in Venice in 1727. As Boerhaave had the habit of constantly citing classic works on various subjects during his lectures, this book served partly as a kind of brief guide to the major literature on the topics it covered. Digital facsimile of the J. F. Bernard edition from Google Books at this link.

Digitall facsimile from the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek at this link.

The first inventory of Portuguese hot springs, fountains, rivers, wells, lakes and reservoirs reputed to have medicinal properties, including some with allegedly supernatural powers of healing. For the 337 entries, Fonseca Henriques provided locations and comments on the facilities and the history of the sites. The extensive index by location sorts the waters by what they were reputed to cure, ranging from kidney stones and stomach pains to paralysis, rabies, and venereal disease. (Richard Ramer). Digital facsimile from the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal at this link.

An extensive illustrated work, with 283 copperplate engravings, on the natural history of the Danube river, the longest river in central Europe, which runs from southern Germany into Austria, through Slovakia, Hungary, along Croatia, through Serbia and Romania, and along Bulgaria, towards the Black Sea, flowing through Regensburg, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade and numerous other cities. 

Volumes 4-6 describe the animals living in the river and about its course, a description of the fish, birds and their nests, the quadrupeds roaming the banks, etc. The volumes are devoted to cartography, astronomy and hydrography (Volume 1),  archaeology and history of the settlements, towns, roads and bridges (Vol. 2); mineralogy (Vol. 3); fish (Vol. 4), which includes one plate with shells, and two with turtles; avifauna (Vol. 5); and several other subjects, including meteorological and climatological observations, notes on the river's velocity, the insects occurring in and near the river, etc., (Vol. 6). They are titled as follows: Tomus I, in tres partes digestus : geographicum, astronomicum, hydrographicum; Tomus II. De Antiquitatibus Romanorum ad ripas Danubii; Tomus. III. De Mineralibus circa Danubium effossis; Tomus IV. De Piscibus in aquis Danubii viventibus; Tomus V. De Avibus circa aquas Danubii vagantibus, et de ipsarum nidis.; Tomus VI. De Fontibus Danubii. Observationes anatomicae. De Aquis Danubii et Tibisci. Catalogus plantarum. Observationes habitae cum barometris et thermometris. De Insectis. Wood: “The part of ornithological plates with 74 drawings by the Italian artist Raimondo Manzini (1658-1730), including 59 birds, and 15 nests with eggs, the latter are considered the first illustrations of their kind in the history of ornithology” (DSB).

"Recent data on intercostal muscle function, largely electromyographic, tend to confirm the ideas of Hamberger, who, in 1748 (recte 1727), proposed a theory of intercostals muscle action upon the rib cage. Hamberger's scheme was based upon a consideration of the ribs as levers and the vertebral column and sternum as fulcra, and of the directions in which the internal and external intercostal muscle fibers ran. He proposed that the external intercostals were inspiratory and that the internal intercostals were expiratory, except in the parasternal regions where the internal intercostals (there are no other intercostal muscles) are inspiratory. Careful selective electromyographic studies in both animals and man (using small bipolar needle electrodes) by Draper et al, Taylor et al, and Sears et al have amply confirmed Hamberger's ideas" (John T. Sharp., et al., "Respiratory Muscle Function and the Use of Respiratory Muscle Electromyography in the Evaluation of Respiratory Regulation", Chest, 70 [1976], 150).

Digital facsimile of second edition, Jena, 1737, from Google Books at this link.

(Prior editions of this bibliography incorrectly cited the third edition of 1748 for this discovery.)

By cutting the intercostal nerves in the neck, du Petit found that disturbances occurred in the eyes and face of the same side; this disproved earlier views of the cerebral origin of the intercostal nerves.

Discovery of the vasomotor nerves (see also No. 1313).

Hales initiated a new stage in physiological experimentation with his "statical" methods, which were characterized by precise quantitative measurements, repetition and the used of controls, and were based on the assumption that that the known laws of matter operated in the bodies of plants and animals as well as in non-living materials. In his investigations of plant physiology, described in Vegetable Staticks, Hales studied the movement of water in plants, determining that leaf suction is the main force by which water is raised through a plant, and showing that plants lose water constantly via transpiration through their leaves. He also demonstrated that plants do not have a true circulation, and developed techniques to measure the varying rates of growth in different plant structures.

Vegetable Staticks is the first volume of Hales's Statical Essays, the second volume of which (Haemastaticks) appeared in 1733. Haemastaticks ecords Hales' invention of the manometer, with which he was the first to measure blood-pressure. His work is the greatest single contribution to our knowledge of the vascular system after Harvey, and led to the development of the blood-pressure measuring instruments now in universal use.

In the course of his work Hales indirectly discovered vasodilatation and vasoconstriction. Concluding that the force of the arterial blood in the capillaries could not be sufficient to produce muscular motion, he suggested a force regulated by the nerves, and perhaps electrical. "Hales was therefore the first physiologist to suggest, with some evidence to support it, the role of electricity in neuromuscular phenomena" (Dictionary of Scientific Biography). Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

François Colot was the last and best-known member of the Colot family, itinerant lithotomists.

First reported case of perforating gastric ulcer.

The first book on obesity in English.

The first textbook of physiology published in the Western hemisphere. Digital facsimile from Medical Heritage Library, Internet Archive at this link.

An early biographical account of Servetus and his martyrdom for heresy, prepared under the direction of Johann Lorenz von Mosheim whose Kaisergeschichte (2 vols, 1746-48) initiated the modern, objective historiography of heresy. Allwoerden's biography of Servetus was the most significant of the studies that revived interest in the 16th century martyr who described the lesser circulation.
Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The result of 36 years of work by Vaillant, published by Herman Boerhaave after Vaillant's death. A pioneer in the study of the sexuality of plants, Vaillant introduced the terms stamen, ovary, and egg with respect to plant anatomy.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Auction catalogue of Rivinus's library by Georg Samuel Hermann.  Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Lancisi noted the frequency of cardiac aneurysm and showed the importance of syphilis, asthma, palpitation, violent emotions, and excess as causes of aneurysms. He was the first to describe cardiovascular syphilis. Lancisi shares with Vieussens the honor of laying the foundation of the pathology of heart disease. Revision of 1745 edition of De aneurysmatibus, with translation and notes, by W. C. Wright, 1952.

Pierre Fauchard has been called the “Father of Dentistry”; his comprehensive and scientific account of all that concerned dentistry in the 18th century is one of the greatest books in the history of the subject. The second edition, published in 1746, contains a good description (vol. 1, pp. 275-77) of pyorrhea alveolaris; it was reprinted, Paris, 1961, and was translated into English by Lilian Lindsay and published by the British Dental Association in 1946 (reprinted Pound Ridge, N.Y., Milford House, 1969). Digital facsimile of the second edition from Google Books at this link.

Contains some of the earliest attempts at printing copper plates in color. The plates were "engraved by [Elisha] Kirkall in what is generally called 'mezzotint printed in colour.' The phrase is misleading. ... Kirkall achieved a half-hearted imitation of true mezzotint by rather clumsily roughening the toned parts of the plate with a roulette and leaving the rest of it untouched. The so-called 'colour-printing' was equally elementary: many of the figures are merely printed in a mossy green and touched with water-colour; in a few of the others, two or three different coloured inks have been used in a single printing." (Wilfrid Blunt, The art of botanical illustration (1950), p. 133.)

"Historia Plantarum Rariorum depicted plants from the Chelsea Physic Garden and the Cambridge Botanic Garden. These plants had come from the Cape of Good Hope, North America, the West Indies, and Mexico. Elisha Kirkall produced the mezzotint engravings. Each plate was dedicated to a patron and showed an engraved coat-of-arms or monogram. Besides van Huysum, other artists were William Houstoun, Massey, G. Sartorys, and R. Sartorius. The work was published in five parts of ten plates each between 1728 and 1737, and was sold by subscription. The venture was not a financial success and publication ceased in 1737" (Wikipedia article on Jacob van Huysum, accessed 10-2021).

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

“Descemet’s membrane” was first described by Duddell. Descemet described it in 1758; see No. 1484.1.

The versatile Cheselden made an artificial pupil in an eye in which the products of inflammation had closed or obscured the natural pupil. This iridotomy operation was, next to Daviel’s cataract operation, the most important contribution to ophthalmology during the 18th century.

The first large history of medicine; Le Clerc is sometimes called the “Father of the History of Medicine”. The first edition appeared in 1696, but later editions are more useful. English translation, 1699. Reprint of 1729 edition, Amsterdam, B. M. Israel, 1967.

A very early book on music therapy. Among other things Browne was aware of the effect of music upon mood, and recognized that music could lift depression. OCLC states "Originally published anonymously in 1727 under title: A mechanical essay on singing, musick and dancing." See Alicia Clair Gibbons and George N. Heller, "Music Therapy in Handel's England: Browne's Medicina Musica (1729)," College Music Symposium, 25 (1985) 59-72.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Micheli provided descriptions of 1900 plants, including first published descriptions of about 1400. Among those were 900 fungi and lichens, accompanied by 73 plates. He included information on "the planting, origin and growth of fungi, mucors, and allied plants", and was the first to point out that fungi have reproductive bodies or spores. He observed that when spores were placed on slices of melon the same type of fungi were produced that the spores came from, and from this observation he noted that fungi did not arise from spontaneous generation. He also formulated a systematic classification system with keys for genera and species (Wikipedia). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.