“THE FATHER OF INDUSTRIAL HYGIENE”

RAMAZZINI, Bernardino. Opera Omnia Medica et Physiologica. Londini: Apud Paulum et Isaacum Vaillant, 1739. Two volumes in one. Small thick quarto, 19th-century three-quarter tan calf gilt, burgundy morocco spine label, marbled boards. $750.

Fourth edition of Ramazzini’s works, with five plates of apparatuses (two folding), containing his ground-breaking De Morbis Artificum, the first systematic study of occupational diseases.

Called "the father of industrial hygiene" (Castiglione, 564), Ramazzini first became interested in occupational diseases after learning from a cesspool cleaner the particular health risks of that trade. First published in 1700, his De Morbis Artificum Diatriba (published here in Volume II) describes the symptoms and hazardous conditions of "nearly sixty trades and professions including mining, masonry, ceramics, blacksmithing, farming, brewing, and weaving" (Norman 1776). A special chapter is reserved for the "diseases of learned men." For the first time doctors are urged to take patients' occupations into account when making diagnoses and prescribing remedies. With a life of the author by Bartholomeo Ramazzini. "De barometro dissertationes duae Jacobi Placentini" (pp. 37, [3]) follows index to Volume II. See Norman 1776; Garrison & Morton 2121; Castiglione, 564-65. From the library of Dr. Ernst L. Wynder, co-author of the first large-scale study of smoking and lung cancer (JAMA 143:329) and founding editor of Preventive Medicine. Bookplate of Francis Lord Balfour of Burleigh, whose medical career included surgeon to the East India Company in Bengal.

Dampstaining to bottom margins, occasional wormholing (particularly to the Placentini tract). A very good copy.