Lavoisier histoire de la société royale de médecine

2 parts in one quarto volume, red morocco, triple gilt fillet, fleur-de-lis at the corners, coat of arms in the centre, spine decorated with gilt fleur-de-lis, tan title and year labels, gilt inner dentelle, gilt edges. Contemporary binding.

252 x 196 mm.

Lavoisier, Antoine Laurent de. History of the Royal Society of Medicine. Year 1782 and first part of 1783. With the Memoirs of Medicine and Medical Physics, for the same years, taken from the registers of this Society.

Paris, Théophile Barrois the younger, 1787.

First edition of the Lavoisier Memoir on the alterations that occur in air in various circumstances in which people are gathered in society.

Duveen & Klickstein, no. 79; Quentin Bauchart, II, 333-356.

It includes two engraved plates and thirty folding printed tables.

Lavoisier is considered the father of modern chemistry. Through his study of the nature and properties of matter, he established a scientific method that enabled chemistry to become a science in its own right.

The life and work of the French chemist are set in a very important historical period for the French nation. The chemical revolution serves in a way as a parabolic prelude to the French Revolution. Lavoisier, initiator of the former, would be sacrificed by the latter. From the day his head fell under the guillotine, Lavoisier became a national hero, a sacrificed and innocent victim of a blind and ignorant revolution.

Clarity, logic, precision, and force of ideas make his texts highly readable even today. His memoirs are those of a professional scientist in the 18th-century sense; they also reflect the lifestyle of a social group. Lavoisier’s style is of exceptional quality. (Danielle Fauque).

The complete collection of this periodical publication of the Royal Society of Medicine includes ten volumes published between 1779 and 1798, relating to research conducted during the years 1776 to 1789.

The Royal Society of Medicine was founded in 1776 by royal ordinance. A fusion of two existing commissions, the “Commission of Medicine in Paris to keep correspondence with provincial doctors for everything that may relate to epidemic and epizootic diseases” and the “Commission for the examination of secret remedies and mineral waters,” the purpose of this society was to study diseases and their modes of transmission in order to propose appropriate remedies. It was dissolved under the French Revolution, in 1793.

Superb copy preserved in its contemporary red morocco binding bearing the arms of Marie-Thérèse of Savoy, Countess of Artois.

“Marie-Thérèse of Savoy (1756-1803) married, on November 16, 1773, in Versailles, her brother-in-law, Charles-Philippe, Count of Artois, later Charles X. She died in Gratz (Austria) on June 2, 1805, leaving two sons, the Duke of Angoulême and the Duke of Berry. Her library, organized by her secretary Félix Nogaret, was one of the most important of the time; the books were generally bound in red morocco with no ornament other than a triple fillet” (Olivier Hermal, 2551/7).