ROBERT NESBITTS OSTEOGENIE ODER ABHANDLUNG VON ERZEUGUNG DER KNOCHEN IM MENSCHLICHEN KÖRPER IN ZWEEN VORLESUNGEN ERKLÄRT, DIE AUF DEM ANATOMISCHEN THEATER DER WUNDÄRZTE IN LONDON DEN ERSTEN UND ANDERN DES HEUMONATS, IM JAHR 1731. GEHALTEN WORDEN . . .

Altenburg: Paul Emanuel Richters, 1753. Quarto. [8],xxviii,[4],104 pp. plus six folding plates. In German. Contemporary three-quarter leather and speckled paper over boards. 19th-century ex-dono inscription in title page and occasional 19th-century marginal notes in German. Spine and nearly all leather perished, joints cracked. 2 x 2 cm. square excision in front free endpaper. Very light occasional foxing, else near fine internally in a fair binding.

The German translation of Robert Nesbitt's best known work, HUMAN OSTEOGENY EXPLAINED IN TWO LECTURES, first published in London in 1736. Robert Nesbitt (1697-1761) trained at Leiden University under (truncated) Bernhardus Albinus the Elder (1653-1721) and Herman Boerhaave, the "Dutch Hippocrates" (1668-1738). An Englishman, Nesbitt returned to London after his studies and commenced his medical career; he was admitted as a fellow to the College of Physicians in 1729. The present work comprises two lectures he delivered at the Anatomical Theatre of the Surgeons of London in 1731, in which he demonstrated, for the first time, that bones in the human fetus were generated in both cartilage and membrane. The illustrations on six folding leaves, here engraved by Johann Christian Gottfried Fritzsch (ca. 1720 - 1802), were the first accurately to show the full course of human bone genesis. This edition scarce, with OCLC recording nine copies (all in Europe). (Inventory #: 536)