Full title: Dictionnaire historique de la Médecine, contenant son Origine, ses Progrés, ses Révolutions, ses Sectes & son Etat chez différens Peuples, ce que l’on a dit des Dieux ou Héros anciens de cette Science: l’Histoire des plus célébres Médecins, Philosophes ou Personnes savantes de toutes Nations qui ont concouru à son avancement, des fameux Anatomistes, Chirurgiens, Botanistes & Chimistes, avec l’Exposition de leurs Sentimens & de leurs Découvertes, & le Catalogue de leurs principaux Ouvrages, le tout d’après ce que les meilleurs Auteurs ont écrit sur cette Matiére. [Two vols.]
Author(s): Nicolas François Joseph Éloy
Location:
McGill University; Montreal, Canada
Shelf mark:
WZ 260 E485d 1755
Publication information:
Liége & Frankfurt: J.F. Bassompierre, 1755
Notes:
A remarkable and important survival: this is the author’s own copy, heavily annotated in preparation for the enormously revised and enlarged second edition of his great work of medical biographies. Garrison-Morton 6704 describes the second edition of 1778 in four volumes as “the earliest exhaustive collection of medical biographies” (& erroneously gives the date of our first edition as 1775). Éloy (1714-88), Belgian physician and historian, took his medical degree at Louvain and did further studies in Paris. Upon returning to his native city of Mons, he established a successful practice and became physician to Prince Charles Alexandre de Lorraine, governor of the Austrian Netherlands. Éloy has made here numerous kinds of corrections, including “x-ing” out the old title-page and providing an entirely new title: “Dictionnaire historique, Bibliographique, et typographique de la Médecine et des Médecins, Anatomistes, Chirurgiens, Botanistes et Chymistes distingués, par des connaissances supérieures et dans la République des lettres, avec les ouvrages de Chaconne. Seconde édition.” Nearly every page has corrections, deletions, and/or additions and many are very heavily revised. Our copy of the first edition is, essentially, the working manuscript for the expanded second edition, a work which appeared 23 years later. Very good set preserved in a box. In Vol. II, leaves L1-5 cut out, probably by Éloy himself.
Digital copy:
None available
Bibliography: