Dictionnaire des sciences medicales, par une societe de medecins et de chirurgiens.

Paris:: Crapart & C.L.F. Panckoucke, 1812-22., 1812. Complete set of 60 volumes. 127 engraved plates, list of subscribers in the index volume, 10 folding charts; occasional foxing, ink and water-stains. Modern quarter green spines over original marbled boards, gilt-stamped black leather spine labels; re-backed. Ex-lib bookplates and ink stamps of the Norwich & Norfolk United Medical Book Society, early ownership inscription of Hudson Gurney. Fine. FIRST EDITION. [19th Century French Medical Encyclopedia] Possibly one of the most important encyclopedia/dictionaries of medicine ever assembled, and certainly the earliest. As Diderot's encyclopedia became the model for assembling scientific knowledge, this massive set brings together all that was known about medicine in the post-Napoleonic era. Included here are numerous engraved plates of surgical instruments of the period. Also illustrated are facial expressions and signs of mental abnormality, many in the style of Esquirol's work. A smaller set, Dictionnaire abrege? des sciences medicales. . . was concurrently published, however that set is only 15 volumes. In 1821-25, Panckoucke published Dictionnaire des sciences medicales Biographie medicale. . . which includes biographies of medical luminaries. Nicolas Philibert Adelon (1782-1862) and Francois Victor Merat (1780-1851) were two of the prominent contributors to this medical encyclopedia.

This compendious work was not included amongst the items exhibited by the Library of Congress in their Circle of Knowledge exhibition of the history of the encyclopedia. Panckoucke (1736-1798) was involved with issuing various encyclopedias, beginning with Diderot's Encyclopedie, which, ". . . was an immediate success: a new edition was called for even before the first had been completed. C.J. Panckoucke proposed such a new edition in 1761, and bought the rights to the first seven volumes. He approached Diderot to edit a new, revised edition and, when Diderot refused, began to reissue the original volumes. The government intervened in 1770 and seized the three which had appeared. After the death of the last of the original proprietors, in 1775, Panckoucke published a five-volume supplement to the Encyclopedie and later, in 1780, a two-volume index. The complete first edition comprises Diderot's twenty-eight volumes plus Panckoucke's seven; its publication spanned the years 1751-80." [Circle of Knowledge, (1979) p. 8].

Provenance: Hudson Gurney (1775-1864) was an antiquary and verse-writer of Norwich. He became an M.P. for Newtown in 1816 and sat in six successive parliaments. In 1835 he was high-sheriff of Norfolk, and was elected fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (1819), was vice-president from 1822-46, a fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the British Archaeological Association. As such, Gurney may have been the donor of this set to the Norwich & Norfolk Library.

[DNB Vol. VIII, pp. 803-4]. Circle of Knowledge, 1968, 1979; Wellcome II, p. 465.