In
4to (cm. 21,5); legatura recente in piena pelle con filettatura in oro ai piatti
e titolo in oro al dorso; pp. (4), 42 con 4 TAVOLE in rame ripiegate fuori
testo. Antico restauro di una piccola porzione bianca del titolo che non tocca
il testo, per il resto OTTIMA COPIA.
PRIMA
EDIZIONE di quest’opera fondamentale che segna l’inizio dell’embriologia
moderna, «surpassing in accuracy all other contemporary work on the subject and
foreschadowing some of the more important general lines of research in
embryology » (Garrison-Morton, 469).
«His
(Malpighi) study of the development of the chicken in the egg went far beyond
the works of Harvey and Fabrici, dealing with the internal structure to an
unprecedented extent: his chief discoveries, illustrated in his four beautifull
detailed plates, were the vascular areas embraced by the terminal sinus, the
cardiac tube and its segmentation, the aortic arches, the somites, the neural
folds and neural tube, the cerebral and optic vesicles, the protoliver, the
glands of the prestomach, and the feather follicles. Malpighi established the
paths of subsequent embryological research, making the important connection
between embryogenesis and phylogenesis, and playing a formative role in the
development of preformationist theory, which would pose a strong challenge to
the traditional doctrine of epigenesis. No work of equal significance or quality
was published for over 150 years after Malpighi’s investigations until the
time of Pander and von Baer» (J. Norman, Catalogue 10. Science and Medicine,
San Francisco, 1982, nr. 532).
«His
description of the development of the heart in the chick, stage by stage, is
perhaps the most remarkable observational achievement of any biologist in the
seventeenth century, since it is not the story of a single chance or happy
discovery, but the detailed reconstruction of a series of epigenetic stages» (F.J.
Cole, A History of Comparative Anatomy, London, 1944, p. 180).
C. Frati, Bibliografia malpighiana, London, s.d., p. 27, nr. 22. € 3.800,00