Medicine & Anatomy

First and only edition of this uncommon volume on the biological research opportunities offered by Spacelab, the modular laboratory planned for the Space Shuttle as a joint project of NASA and the ESA. The lab was designed as a collection of components that could be used in various configurations according to the needs of each flight. There were twenty-two major Spacelab missions between 1983 and 1998, with individual components flying on a number of other missions.

The contents explain the areas of opportunity for biologists and medical researchers in orbit, including human calcium metabolism, the cardiovascular system, the senses, and the musculoskeletal system, cell and developmental biology, microbiology, botany, radiobiology, the effects of cosmic rays on organisms, the role of gravity in organogenesis and behaviour, bioengineering, the origin of life on earth, and whether life can exist in other parts of the universe.

As the introduction explains, this volume represents “an invitation to biological, medical, and behavioural investigators in Europe to participate in the planning and execution of experiments in the Spacelabs of the 1980s. These manned, earth-orbiting laboratories will offer a working environment which is biologically unique in its absence of effective gravity, a condition which cannot be produced on earth. Spacelab heralds a new era of opportunity for investigating problems of a fundamental nature, making possible a better understanding of life processes on earth”.

An attractive mid-19th century Chinese pharmacy sign advertising deer musk and turtle-based medications. The wooden sign is carved and lacquered in red and black, and features the original, decorative iron handle.

First edition, first printing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Allied technological development during the Second World War. Inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Betty Way Brown, with best wishes, James P. Baxter 3rd”.

Author James F. Baxter (1893-1975) was a historian and for more than twenty years the popular president of Williams College in Massachusetts. During the Second World War he served as research coordinator of information (1941-1943) and director of the Office of Strategic Services (1942-1943), and the work for this book was undertaken during the latter part of the war while he served as the historical researcher for the Office of Scientific Research and Development. It includes chapters on submarine and air warfare, radar and LORAN, rocketry, proximity fuses, fire control technologies, new explosives and propellants, antimalarials, blood transfusion, penicillin, aviation medicine, and the Manhattan Project, among others.

First edition, first printing. The rare offprint of the first major work by prominent cell biologist Honor B. Fell (1900-1986). We can locate only one institutional copy of this offprint, at the University of Southern California.

Fell’s childhood interest in animals and nature was encouraged by her parents, and she received what was at the time an unusually science-focused education. She earned four degrees at St. Andrews and the University of Edinburgh, and then went to Cambridge “to learn a new technique pioneered by T. S. P. Strangeways in his research hospital. Tissues culture was a relatively new art at this time, and he had developed it to the extent that he could study the behavior of living cells on a warm stage. Fell was impressed, and when Strangeways offered her a job as scientific assistant with a grant from the Medical Research Council, she accepted. Her first major study was on chick embryos, examining their cartilage and bones. This work culminated in her first important paper from the Strangeways in 1925, a study of the histogenesis of bone and cartilage in the long bone of embryonic chicks. From this beginning, she used techniques of organ culture to analyze the actions of various agents upon the cells of bone, cartilage, and associated tissues. The preliminary study was continued, and in 1926 she and Strangeways demonstrated that cartilage would not only grow but would differentiate in culture” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 440).

When Strangeways died in 1926 Fell was appointed director of the institute, a position she held for the next forty-one years, performing important research on vitamin A and rheumatoid arthritis, and producing research that led to the discovery of interleuken-1, an important agent of the immune system. Fell was made a fellow of the Royal Society and Dame Commander of the British Empire, and received honorary degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and Smith College.

First edition, first printing, presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Inscribed for Dr. G. A. C. Colston, from his long-time associate, Justine Hill, Baltimore, Mar 26, 1940”.

This work on disease-causing microbes was described as “the best popular presentation that had yet appeared” on the subject by psychiatrist Karl Menninger (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 601). Author Justina Hill (1893-?) attended Smith College and the University of Michigan, then served as a Red Cross worker, running a bacteriological laboratory in Spartanburg, South Carolina during the final two years of the First World War. She was then transferred with a Smith College unit to the Near East, where she ran a laboratory for five thousand refugees. “Upon returning to the United States, Hill was made an associate in bacteriology at the Brady Urological Institute and two years later an instructor in urology... She published numerous technical articles in medical journals as well as popular books on bacteriology” (Ogilvie). In 1942 she published Silent Enemies, on the communicable diseases of war, and in 1944 she contributed a piece in the Atlantic: “How Bad is the Flu? The possibility of recurrent epidemics, perhaps of increasing virulence, even of another pandemic, must be faced”.

An attractive trade card for the chemists Hingston & Company of Cheltenham, “opposite the Plough Hotel. Prescriptions accurately prepared with drugs and Chemicals from Apothecaries Hall”. The text is elaborately engraved and the card features a well-executed bust of Hippocrates and staff of Asclepius. The Science Museum in London has a copy of the same trade card, and the National Archives hold the company’s day book and bankruptcy papers from 1837-1839.

First edition of the initial sequencing of the human genome. An attractive copy in the original wrappers, complete with the original CD, the “Geography of Our Genome” poster, and a poster reproducing the journal cover in large format, all in unused condition. Together with a copy of The Genome Directory published as a Nature supplement in 1995, the extended human genetic linkage map published in 1996, and a poster of the genome as it was understood in 2000. Copies in such nice condition, particularly with the additional material, are rare.

The possibility of sequencing the entire humane genome had been proposed as early as 1979, and interest among both scientists and governments increased during the 1980s as technological advancements made the concept more feasible. The first federal funding was received in 1987 and the project was officially launched in 1990. Involving scientists in the US, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and China, it remains the world’s largest collaborative biological research undertaking.

“The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium published the first draft of the human genome in the journal Nature in February 2001 with the sequence of the entire genome's three billion base pairs some 90 percent complete. More than 2,800 researchers who took part in the consortium shared authorship. A startling finding of this first draft was that the number of human genes appeared to be significantly fewer than previous estimates, which ranged from 50,000 genes to as many as 140,000. The full sequence was completed and published in April 2003. Upon publication of the majority of the genome in February 2001, Francis Collins, then director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, noted that the genome could be thought of in terms of a book with multiple uses: ‘It's a history book - a narrative of the journey of our species through time. It's a shop manual, with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building every human cell. And it's a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease’” (”What is the Human Genome Project?”, website of the National Humane Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health).

In addition to the 2001 issue of Nature, this set includes The Genome Directory, published in September 1995 as a supplement to Nature volume 28, issue 6547S. As the introduction explains, “the speed with which the information [on the genome] has accumulated is remarkable... Even five years ago Genebank contained fewer than 3,000 genes, and only a few percent of the human genome had been mapped to contigs [overlapping sequences] of any sort. Yet this directory contains a description of 88,000 expressed sequence tags, or ESTs, of which 30,000 can be combined into contigs termed ‘tentative human consensus’ sequences”.

Also included is the final Généthon Human Genetic Linkage Map, published by Nature in March 1996. A French laboratory, Généthon was founded in 1990 with the specific aim of decoding and mapping the human genome as an outgrowth of research on muscular dystrophy. Pulling ahead of American teams working in the same field, they produced the first tentative mapping of the human genome in 1992, and released successive versions of it up to this one in 1996 before turning their focus to gene therapy (Généthon website). Finally, there is also a large poster published by Nature, “The 24 Volumes of the Human Book of Life (October 2000 edition)” that visualises the then-current map of the genome.

Second edition (originally published in 1872) and a nice association copy, inscribed in 1928 from Louie M. Brooks, Secretary and Warden of the London School of Medicine for Women, the institution founded by author Sophia Jex-Blake as the first medical school in Britain to allow women to fully qualify as physicians. Copies of both the first two editions are scarce on the market.

Sophia Jex-Blake (1840-1912) “spent most of her life fighting for a career in medicine for herself and for other women” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p 657). She was close friends with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, whom she assisted in trying to enter the medical school at the University of Edinburgh. In 1868 Jex-Blake herself began studying medicine under Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor in the United States, but was forced to return to Britain after her father fell ill. After a strenuous campaign, she and four other women were admitted into the medical school at Edinburgh in 1869, but they faced increasing obstacles. Most of the professors refused to teach them anatomy, and there was aggression from male students, including a mob that tried to prevent them from entering Surgeon’s Hall. Finally in 1872 the University insisted that it would not award them degrees, but only certificates of proficiency, leading to a lengthy court case and the passing of an Act of Parliament that allowed medical examining bodies to test women.

“Meanwhile, Jex-Blake had founded the London School of Medicine for Women (1874), with a staff of respected lecturers. She herself was granted the legal right to practice medicine in Great Britain by the Irish College of Physicians in 1877. She began practising in Edinburgh in 1878, founded the Women’s Hospital there in 1885, and in 1886 organised the Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women” (Ogilvie).

Medical Women is a history of women’s participation in the field, from the ancient world through the medieval and early modern periods, but its main focus is the ‘Battle of Edinburgh”, as Jex-Blake calls it. The first edition was published in 1872, the year in which Edinburgh rejected the women’s demand for full degrees, so this second edition, published in 1886, has been updated with a significant amount of new material covering the lengthy court cases and the establishment of the London School.

This copy was presented as a gift from Louie M. Brooks, who in 1910 is recorded as the Secretary and Warden of the London School (https://wellcomecollection.org/works/wcgpsubv). She was presumably still working at the school in this or some other capacity when the book was gifted in 1928, as she includes the institution’s formal name, “London (Royal Free Hospital) School of Medicine for Women”, under her signature (the school had been consolidated with the Royal Free in 1896). The identity of the recipient of this copy, S. G. Rawson, is unclear, but the name appears in the Journal of Education for 1904 as Director of Education for Worcestershire, and there is an 1884 letter of recommendation for an S. G. Rawson connected with the University of Liverpool in the National Archives (https://archive.org/stream/journalofeducati3619unse/journalofeducati3619unse_djvu.txt  & https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/733ef856-7060-4b25-914a-32b1688bde0a).

During the first half of the 19th century, hairwork was a popular way to both mourn the dead and to commemorate friendships and family connections with the living. A largely female workforce specialised in preparing hair for brooches, pendants, and bracelets. In some cases hair from two or more individuals was braided together, in others the hair was arranged decoratively or used to create elaborate sentimental images. This is a particularly nice example of the art, mounted in 14-18k gold and dating from the first decades of the 19th century. The hair clipping has been fanned and curled into an elegant wave shape with a tiny seed pearl “clasp” at the base, and the reverse is monogrammed “AB”.

First edition, first printing of the autobiography of one of the world’s leading cancer surgeons. Presentation copy inscribed by the author to columnist William Safire on the title, “To Bill Safire, with best wishes & thanks for all you do for so many at Dana and the New York Times, Lasalle D. Leffall, 9/27/06.”

LaSalle D. Leffall (1930-2019) graduated first in his class from the Howard University School of Medicine and served as a senior fellow in cancer surgery at Memorial Sloane-Kettering, which he chose because “I thought surgery was the most dynamic field” and “Memorial Sloane-Kettering was using some of the most exciting techniques” (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 205). In 1962 he joined the faculty of Howard, rising to chair of the department of surgery only eight years later.

Leffall “focused on clinical studies of cancer of the breast, colorectum, head, and neck,” publishing more than 116 journal articles across his career. He became the first Black president of the American Cancer Society in 1978, and “used this national forum to emphasize the problems of cancer in minorities, holding the first conference on cancer among Black Americans in February 1979” (Krapp). Leffalle also served as the first Black president of the American College of Surgeons, was a visiting professor at more than 200 institutions, and received numerous awards. In 1996 Howard University established an endowed chair in surgery in his name.

Bill Safire (1929-2009) began his career as a public relations executive before joining the Nixon campaign in 1960, working as a speechwriter for both Nixon and Agnew. In 1978 he began a nearly thirty year-long career as a New York Times political columnist. Lefall’s mention of “Dana” in the inscription references the Charles A. Dana Foundation, a private charity supporting brain research, of which Safire was chief executive and chairman and Leffalle a member of the board of directors. This copy of No Boundaries was inscribed to Safire at a Dana Foundation event, “Can Immunology Help Win the War on Cancer?” at which Leffall was one of the panellists, and which was followed by a reception and signing to celebrate the book’s publication.

The rare first edition of this groundbreaking work on the embryology of the human eye. No copies are noted in auction records since 1980.

Dame Ida C. Mann (married name Gye, 1893-1983) entered the London School of Medicine for Women in 1914, and also undertook training at the Royal Free and St Mary's hospitals. During the period at St Mary's she assisted Professor J. E. S. Frazer in embryological research; her developmental studies were presented as a dissertation for the DSc (London, 1924), and formed the basis of her notable first textbook, The Development of the Human Eye (1928), still in print forty years later” (ODNB).

“After qualifying Mann decided to specialize in ophthalmology, and took her first post under Leslie Paton at St Mary's, becoming FRCS in 1924. She also held several teaching appointments while she progressed up the ladder towards consultant ophthalmologist status, reaching the highest point in 1927 with appointment as senior surgeon on the staff of Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, the first woman ever to do so. At the same time she established a Harley Street practice and consolidated herself as a leading clinical ophthalmologist in London, but still carried on her developmental studies and teaching (including the diploma course in Oxford). In this period up to the Second World War she learned and promoted the then new technique of slit-lamp microscopy of the eye, applying it both to patients and to animals in the London Zoo. She was also instrumental in bringing to London in 1938 Josef Dallos, the Hungarian pioneer of glass contact lenses, just ahead of the Nazi take-over of Hungary, and with him she established the first contact lens centre in the United Kingdom. With the outbreak of war it became necessary to evacuate Moorfields. At the instigation of Sir Hugh Cairns Mann moved to Oxford in 1941 to undertake the clinical training of medical students diverted from London, and there she was appointed to Margaret Ogilvy's readership in ophthalmology, as well as a personal chair, the first woman ever to hold the title of professor in the University of Oxford, and a professorial fellowship in St Hugh's College. Despite this time-consuming work she still travelled to London to perform surgery, carried out important research on the ocular effects of war gases, and kept up a staggering number of other activities, including the vigorous reorganization of Oxford Eye Hospital. In this period she was the first to use penicillin to treat ocular infection.” (ODNB).

Mann emigrated to Australia in 1949 and continued her medical and research career, travelling throughout Australasia and the Pacific to study eye diseases. “In recognition of Mann's many contributions to research, teaching, and clinical practice, she was appointed CBE (1950) and DBE (1980), as well as receiving honorary degrees, prizes, and medals from many countries (ODNB).

The rare offprint of the dissertation of the first Black American to earn a doctorate in anatomy, a presentation copy inscribed by the author to his doctoral advisor on the upper wrapper, “To Dr. W. Bloom with my best regards, Roscoe L. McKinney”. WorldCat locates only three institutional copies: at Duke University, the University of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque Nationale. Together with another offprint of the same paper, from Abdruck aus Archiv für Experimentelle Zellforschung besonders Gewebezüchtung, with McKinney’s pencilled ownership signature to the upper wrapper.

Roscoe L. McKinney (1900-1978) earned his bachelor’s degree from Bates College in 1921 and then worked as a biology professor, first at Morehouse and then at Howard University, where his department head was the famed zoologist Ernest Everett Just.

McKinney’s doctoral work was done at the University of Chicago where, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, “he became involved in tissue culture studies under the late Alexander Maximow and later under professor William Bloom. Illustrations and citations of work contained in his PhD thesis there were later included in several succeeding editions of the Textbook of Histology by Maximow and Bloom” (obituary in the Journal of the National Medical Association, volume 71, number 5, May 1979).

After completing his doctorate, McKinney founded the Howard University anatomy department and was its chairman between 1930 and 1947, concurrently serving as vice-dean of the College of Medicine. During the 1950s and 60s he spent significant time overseas, first as a Fulbright fellow at the Royal College of Medicine in Baghdad, then as an instructor at the Osmania Medical College of Hyderbad. He worked as a consultant in anatomy at the University of Saigon during the height of the Vietnam War, between 1969 and 1971.

The recipient of this offprint, McKinney’s advisor William Bloom (1899-1972), was a prominent histologist, “well-known for his research on cells of connective tissue and their interrelationships; the ionizing radiation on cells and tissues; and the development of clinical hematology. He developed apparatus for pinpointing small parts of cells, including chromosomes, with beams of ionizing or ultra-violet radiations... He was also part of the Manhattan Project, where he studied the effects of radiation on cells” (finding aid for the William Bloom Papers, University of Chicago Library, 2009).

A superb, unused Art Nouveau chromolithographic catalogue issued by the German pharmaceutical and medical supply firm Michael Birk, probably in the 1890s.

This remarkable, 320 page catalogue catalogue contains 15 double-sided plates of elaborate chromolithographic, metallic, and embossed designs for product labels, as well as another 290 pages advertising an incredible array of other products. The chromolithographic labels could be ordered in bulk to be used on bottles and jars filled in person by the pharmacist, and some could be personalised with the shop’s name and address. The catalogue was evidently designed for international distribution, as the examples are shown in a variety of languages, including Arabic. Some of the products include lemon and orange syrup, ginger ale, Egyptian nerve tonic, quinine, toothpaste, cod liver oil, antiseptics, a wide variety of alcoholic beverages including wine, port, rum and rum punch, champagne, and gin, and cosmetics products such as eau de cologne, agua de florida and scented waters. Most of the labels are very elaborate, with colourful designs echoing the origins or contents of the products, some with an exotic or Orientalist flavour, and others using historical imagery. Some are plainer, giving only the product name or a number. Nine pages of labels incorporate fine metallic and die-cut and embossed cameo-like decoration - of note are the two pages of delicate perfume bottle labels.

The remainder of the catalogue details a variety of products, all depicted in large and well-executed engravings. They include bottles, pots, boxes, tubes and dispensers, including decorative bottles and perfume atomisers, and display units. For the use of the pharmacist are moulds, rollers, mortars and pestles, scales, laboratory glassware, bunsen burners, alembics, and ovens. And there are sections for medical dressings and devices, generators of therapeutic electricity, and all types of surgical and dental tools, including large items such as chairs, tables and boilers. A superb catalogue encompassing all of late-19th century pharmacy and medicine.

First edition, first printing of this key work by one of Britain’s leading biochemists. A beautiful copy in the jacket.

Rosalind Pitt-Rivers earned her PhD in biochemistry in 1939 under the supervision of Sir Charles Harington, whose lab at the National Institute for Medical research she then joined. The Second World War interrupted her career, but in 1950 she returned to Harington’s lab. “This move turned out to be a propitious event in her scientific career. Inspired by Harington's major interest in elucidating the structure of thyroid hormones, she became deeply involved with biochemical research on how what was then thought to be the only thyroid hormone, L-thyroxine (T4), was synthesized in the thyroid gland. In 1951 a young Canadian endocrinologist, Jack Gross, joined Pitt-Rivers as a postdoctoral fellow to discover more about an unidentified iodine-containing compound that he had earlier observed in human and rodent blood. Taking advice from experts in analytical biochemistry at that time working at the NIMR (in particular, A. J. P. Martin, A. T. James, and H. Gordon), Pitt-Rivers and Gross very rapidly identified this unknown compound to be 3,3ʹ,5-triiodothyronine (T3), a report of which was published in The Lancet in 1952. At about the same time a group in Paris at the Collège de France (S. Lissitzky, R. Michel, and J. Roche) identified T3 in the thyroid gland and showed that it was made there as a component of thyroglobulin and secreted into the bloodstream. The following year Gross and Pitt-Rivers were able to demonstrate that a large part of T3 in the blood was derived from T4, and that it was considerably more potent than its precursor, thus establishing T3 to be the principal thyroid hormone. The discovery of triiodothyronine quickly brought Pitt-Rivers international recognition, including her election as a fellow of the Royal Society in 1954” (ODNB).

First edition, first printing. Presentation copy inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Mr. and Mrs. John L. Telford, you now have a most interesting world and many new problems, try to solve some of them. Hildrus A. Poindexter, July 20th, 1980”. The identity of the recipients is unclear. An exceptional copy, the boards and jacket bright and fresh.

Born near Memphis, Tennessee in 1901, Hildrus A. Poindexter (1901-1987) decided at the age of five that he would become a doctor. He worked his way through school, teaching himself Latin, Greek, and algebra. He specialised in tropical medicine and received his MD from Harvard in 1927, followed by his PhD in microbiology and immunology at Columbia in 1932.

Between 1931 and 1943 Poindexter taught bacteriology, preventative medicine, and public health at Howard University, then served for three years as a U.S. Army physician in the South Pacific, New Guinea, the Philippines, and occupied Japan. Later tours of duty took him to Liberia, Vietnam, Surinam, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Jamaica, and Sierra Leone. “In all of these assignments, he used his knowledge of tropical medicine in efforts to improve the poor health situation of the citizens of these countries” (Krapp, Notable Black American Scientists, p. 253).

“Poindexter’s importance as a medical researcher lies in his careful scientific observations of the many tropical diseases he encountered in his foreign duty posts and the very extensive reports he wrote concerning his findings. He often suggested possible medications to eliminate or alleviate the diseases, which were sometimes based upon his own field experiments. these reports served as valuable raw data upon which other scientists and public health physicians could base their own research” (Krapp, p. 253).

First edition of this significant work by the doctor who identified the transmission pathway of malaria.

Ronald Ross (1857-1932) was a physician in the Indian Medical Service who became interested in malaria during the 1890s. He was mentored by Patrick Manson, the leading British specialist in tropical diseases, and set out to prove Manson’s mosquito hypothesis. Ross’s first breakthrough was proving that the parasite in question could be transmitted to mosquito stomachs from infected humans, and he was then able to track the entire infection cycle in birds using avian malaria. It was the Italian Giovanni Battista Grassi who conclusively demonstrated the cycle in humans shortly thereafter.

During the resulting debates on prevention, Ross “strongly favoured vector control as the most cost-efficient means to prevent the disease, and he developed a sophisticated mathematical model of malaria epidemiology to show that it was not necessary to eradicate all Anophelines in a particular area to effect a significant reduction in malaria incidence. Ross's model was rooted in the mathematics of probability (what he called a theory of happenings), and although it was later recognized as a basis of mathematical epidemiology it was poorly appreciated in Ross's lifetime and made relatively little impact” (ODNB). Ross elaborated on his mathematical ideas in The Prevention of Malaria, which contained “chapters by different experts on malaria control in many malarious countries, but the bulk of the monograph contained Ross's own reconstruction of the contributions made by various individuals to the discovery of the transmission of malaria by Anopheles mosquitoes” (ODNB). The volume also contains sections on the history of malaria and the progress and symptoms of the disease.

The uncommon offprint of physician and anatomist Florence Sabin’s first major work, undertaken when she was an undergraduate and published the following year as the classic textbook An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain. WorldCat locates only four copies of this offprint, at King’s College London, Brown University, Washington University St Louis, and the University of Sydney.

Sabin was born in 1871, and attended Smith College, where she decided to become a doctor. “The newly opened Johns Hopkins Medical School was the obvious choice for an aspiring woman physician, for it had been financed by a group of Baltimore women who had attached to their gift the stipulation that women be admitted on the same terms as men” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1140). Sabin began her medical training in 1896, quickly becoming a favourite of anatomist Franklin Mall, who “encouraged her to go into research. As an undergraduate she constructed a three-dimensional model of the medulla, pons and midbrain, and in connection with this project wrote a laboratory manual, An Atlas of the Medulla and Midbrain. This manual was published in 1901 and became a popular textbook” (Ogilvie).

Sabin received her medical degree in 1900 and began an internship in internal medicine, and was then awarded a fellowship in anatomy. “She became the university’s first woman faculty member in 1902 and progressed through the ranks, receiving an appointment as professor of histology in 1917 — the first full professorship awarded to a woman at Hopkins” (Ogilvie). Over the course of her career Sabin studied a wide range of subjects, including cell morphology, the physiology of connective tissues and blood cells, immunology, and particularly the body’s reaction to tuberculosis. “Her research on the lymphatics was original, though controversial at the time. Her idea that the lymphatics represented a one-way system closed at the collecting ends, where the fluids entered by seepage arising from pre-existing veins instead of independently was later proved correct” (Ogilvie). After retiring from Johns Hopkins and moving to Denver Colorado, she had a second career as a public health advocate who achieved the passage of a number of public health reform bills.

First and only edition of this uncommon talk by one of the giants of neuroscience.

“There are very few scientists whose discoveries have marked the advent of a new discipline. Berta Scharrer was one of these pioneers. Her scientific career was crowned with great success. The concept of neurosecretion (the storage, synthesis and release of hormones from neurons) developed by Ernst and Berta Scharrer between 1928 and 1937 formed the foundation for contemporary neuroendocrinology... Today we know that secretory nerve cells are widely distributed over the whole nervous system” and “serve to maintain the organism and preserve the species” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1158).

Uncommon, early-20th century anatomical relief of the European lizard species Lacerta agilis (the sand lizard). The publisher’s archive copy, in excellent condition in the original box.

This relief was one of a series produced for schools, Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbeltiere (Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates), designed by the German behavioural scientist and educational writer Bastian Schmid (1870-1944) for the major educational publisher J. F. Schreiber. The printed paper label on the back gives the names of the lizards’ body parts and also introduces the diagram, “In the lizard, the anatomical character of the reptiles is expressed in a clear manner. Therefore, a representative of this group, namely our well-known sand lizard, is presented as the fourth type in this series Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates...”.

Uncommon, early-20th century anatomical relief of the European frog species Rana esculenta (the common European water frog, or green frog). The publisher’s archive copy, in excellent condition in the original box.

This relief was one of a series produced for schools, Vergleichende Anatomie der Wirbeltiere (Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates), designed by the German behavioural scientist and educational writer Bastian Schmid (1870-1944) for the major educational publisher J. F. Schreiber. The printed paper label on the back gives the names of the frogs’ body parts and also introduces the diagram, “This relief is the second in the series Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates and, like the Fish, is intended to be useful both for theoretical instruction and for biological exercises in higher schools. To the left a female, on the right a male animal, both natural size with the brain and spinal cord enlarged. In the female we see the entire intestines, the respiratory system, the heart with its anterior chambers, the aortic arch...”

First edition, first printing of this key reference on hallucinogenic plants by two leaders of the 20th-century psychedelics movement. Copies in fine condition such as this one are particularly uncommon.

Widely considered the founder of modern ethnobotany, Richard Schultes (1915-2001) spent most of his career travelling the Amazon, where he consulted with indigenous people and investigated the plants they used for religious and medicinal purposes. His co-author, Albert Hoffman (1906-2008), was the Swiss chemist who first synthesised LSD and discovered its hallucinogenic effects, and who later isolated psilocybin and psilocin, the primary psychedelic compounds in mushrooms. This volume, copiously illustrated and written for a popular audience, describes the primary species of psychoactive plants and explores their use around the world and throughout history.

Presentation copy of a rare offprint by the biochemist who was the first to produce purified tuberculin for use in studying and treating tuberculosis. Inscribed by the author on the upper wrapper, “Best wishes, Florence B. Seibert”. In this research paper Seibert investigates the presence of bacteria in tumors and the best methods for isolating and identifying them.

Biochemist Florence Seibert (1897-1991) was a productive and highly regarded scientist who worked in a number of areas and received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago during the early 1920s she made her first breakthrough, “a method of eliminating bacterial contamination that was known to occur during the creation of solutions meant for vaccinations and injections. Patients could experience sudden fevers or illness during or after an injection or intravenous treatment. Such afflictions, Seibert discovered, were most often caused by bacterial contamination of the distilled water used to make the solutions. She was able to eliminate this contamination using a special apparatus and procedure she created for this purpose. This would be a great boon later not only for administering drugs but also for making blood transfusions safer during surgery” (Lemelson-MIT biography).

But Seibert’s most significant work was on tuberculosis, particularly her improvements to Robert Koch’s skin test for the infection. “Koch’s method was notoriously inaccurate, for the evaporated solution used in the test contained numerous impurities. Even people with a serious case of tuberculosis sometimes failed to get a positive test. Seibert worked for ten years on methods of isolating pure tuberculin by filtration, by using a guncotton membrane of a specific thickness. The result was a creamy white powder which was the purified protein from the tuberculosis bacillus, known as PPD. Never patenting the process (which would have made her rich), she furnished the National Tuberculosis Association with a large quantity of pure tuberculin” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1173).

First edition, first impression of this account of the development of in-vitro fertilisation by the two scientists responsible for the breakthrough. Inscribed from author Patrick Steptoe to media presenter Bob Holness (1928-2012) on the front free endpaper, “With the compliments of Patrick Steptoe, March 1980”. Though Holness’s name does not appear in this copy, it was purchased as part of his library. Before fronting the gameshow Blockbusters Holness had an extensive career in radio, most notably as co-host of LBC’s AM Programme between 1975 and 1985, and many of his guests, like Steptoe, inscribed copies of their books for him. Copies of A Matter of Life signed or inscribed are particularly uncommon, especially in such lovely condition.

At an early stage in his medical career, Patrick Steptoe (1913-1988) developed, “a special interest in female infertility. Diagnostic techniques, particularly in relation to pelvic pathology and endocrinology, were rudimentary, but laparoscopy and culdoscopy were being introduced at centres in Europe and North America. Steptoe visited these centres and established lasting friendships and collaboration with Raoul Palmer in Paris and Hans Frangenheim in Germany. He became the first gynaecologist to develop laparoscopy in Britain, lectured at the first international symposium in gynaecological laparoscopy in Palermo in 1964, and published the first English book on the subject, Laparoscopy in Gynaecology, in 1967. He described not only the potential for accurate diagnosis in relation to problems of infertility, pelvic infection and pain, ectopic pregnancy, and endometriosis, but also explored the therapeutic aspects of surgical laparoscopy. Within a decade this led to the incorporation of laparoscopy into everyday gynaecological practice.

It was at a meeting at the Royal Society of Medicine in 1968 that Robert Edwards first approached Steptoe. A young geneticist and embryologist, Edwards had already done outstanding work on in vitro fertilization in mice, other mammals, and human beings. The collaboration between the two men lasted for twenty years until Steptoe's death. It resulted in the delivery on 25 July 1978 of Louise Brown, the first ‘test-tube’ baby born after laparoscopic oocyte recovery, in vitro fertilization, and transfer of the eight-cell embryo into the mother's uterus. Steptoe and Edwards reported the bare facts in a dramatic letter to The Lancet (12 August 1978) and gave a full account of their work at a historic scientific meeting at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists on 26 January 1979.

Following Steptoe's retirement from the National Health Service in 1978, he and Edwards founded the Bourn Hall Clinic, near Cambridge, in 1980. Edwards was the first scientific director and Steptoe, as medical director, continued seeing patients until his death, while at the same time training juniors, lecturing worldwide, and collaborating in more than fifty scientific papers” (ODNB).

Third impression, published the year after the first. At its publication Contraception, by birth control advocate, palaeontologist, and eugenicist Marie Stopes, was “widely held to be the most comprehensive volume on the subject ever published” (Exploring Women in Science Through the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection, Duke University Libraries website).

First edition, first impression of this work by birth control advocate, palaeontologist, and eugenicist Marie Stopes on problems with sexual health, including “excessive virility”, “frigidity”, premature ejaculation, and mid-life changes.

Third printing, originally published in 1926.

The Human Body, by birth control advocate, palaeontologist and eugenicist Marie Stopes, is an illustrated introductory text to human anatomy and physiology, covering topics such as the breath and heartbeat, the muscles, the five senses, the brain and nervous system, and reproduction.

Third printing, published the year after the first. With the ownership inscription, pencilled notes, and December 1944 report card of Eva Bernice Simmons, a student at the North Carolina College for Negroes, now North Carolina Central University.

Author Clara Mae Taylor (1989-?) attended Columbia University Teacher’s College and then taught at the Rhode Island Teacher’s College and at her alma mater. She earned her PhD in nutrition science at age forty after spending a year in research at Oxford. “During World War II, Taylor directed a research project under the Department of Agriculture that investigated energy metabolism in children. She also studied metabolism in women at different ages. Her animal experiments on white rats and guinea pigs included dietary studies, an investigation of different levels of ascorbic acid on reproduction, and studies on lactation and survival rates. During the war and the immediate post-war period, she served as a nutritional consultant to two popular women’s magazines, Woman’s Home Companion and Parents Magazine” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 1269).

A beautiful, 78 page chromolithographic catalogue for the American Products Company’s Zanol line of cosmetics, food products, and home goods, including 16 pages in full colour. A superb example of Art Deco marketing design.

The American Products Company was founded in 1907 by three brothers, Albert, Edgar and Clarence Mihalovitch (Albert later changed his surname to Mills), of Cincinnati, who hoped to capture the growing Midwestern consumer market (see “Cosmetics by the American products Company”, Collecting Vintage Compacts blog, January 2012). This catalogue promotes “Shopping in Your Own Home the Zanol Way”, and explains that “the Zanol plan affords you the opportunity of buying the finest products possible to produce, direct from the maker, delivered right to your home, absolutely fresh, unconditionally guaranteed... The complete Zanol line comprises more than 350 products... all of them made from the choicest ingredients in our sanitary, daylight Pure Food Kitchens and Laboratories, under the direction of skilled chemists, chefs, and dieticians”.

Advertised here are a wide array of consumables, with a focus on powders and syrups that could be shipped easily and would appeal to an emerging middle class who were time and money-conscious. For the kitchen there are food flavourings and colours, and numerous instant mixes for soft drinks, jams and jellies, icing, cakes, pies, and puddings. Among them are Ezemade pumpkin pie filling (”it is now possible to serve delicious pumpkin pie throughout the year”); Flakykrust instant pie crust; Mapelade instant maple syrup (”now you can afford delicious maple syrup whenever you want it”); and even Ezemade ice cream powder (”just add to a quart of milk and freeze”). The broad selection of home goods include medications and hygiene products, house cleaning and repair supplies, hot water bottles, paints, insecticide, and even a set of salt and pepper shakers. Perhaps the most appealing section is the beauty line, comprising soaps and toothpaste (”don’t envy pretty teeth - have them”); face and body powders; a variety of lotions including almond, lemon and witch hazel, cucumber and benzoine, and “dermaline of roses” (”keep the alluring charms of radiant youth”); shampoos, pomade, and hair tonics; cosmetics including powder compacts and tubes of lipstick; and perfumes, primarily their three main lines, La Bara (named after the silent film “vamp” Theda Bara, best known for playing Cleopatra), Fleur d’Orient, and Dream Girl. There are also a number of gift sets packaging perfumes, soaps and cosmetics, including a shaving kit for men, sets for new mothers, and an attractive La Barra manicure kit.

First edition of this important book on the use of “twilight sleep” anaesthesia during labour by the female surgeon who first advocated its use in the United States. Rare, with WorldCat listing only electronic copies, and only one copy appearing in auction records (Bonhams 2020).

Born into a Michigan farming family, Bertha van Hoosen (1863-1952) insisted on a medical education despite her parent’s active opposition, and put herself through school by working as a teacher, obstetrical nurse, and demonstrator in anatomy. After graduating she opened a private practice and also worked at the Woman’s Medical School of Northwestern University and as a professor of clinical gynaecology at the Illinois University Medical School. In 1918 Van Hoosen became the first woman to head a medical division at a coeducational university when she was appointed professor and head of obstetrics at Loyola. She was a founder and first president of the American Medical Women's Association, and advocated for women physicians to serve in the First World War.

“Throughout her career, Bertha van Hoosen’s major interest was in women’s health. She was an excellent general surgeon, but she was particularly concerned with women and children. She pioneered the use of scopolamine-morphine anaesthesia for childbirth. Although this method, known as twilight sleep, had become popular in Germany, it was not used in the United States. She produced a book and two articles on her research in this area” (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science p. 1320).

An attractive trade card for the chemists Wickes & Co. of Cheltenham, in fine condition and featuring elaborate copperplate engraving including illustrations of an alembic and a mortar and pestle. Both the Science Museum of London and the Society of Apothecaries hold copies of this trade card.