Flourens, Memoires D’Anatomie, 1844
Memoires D’Anatomie et de Physiologie Comparees, Contenant Des Recherches sur 1 – Les Lois de la Symetrie Dans le Regne Animal; 2 – Le Mecanisme de la Rumination; 3 – Le Mecanisme de la Respiration des Poissons; 4 – Et les Rapports des Extremites Anterieures et Posterieures Dans L’Homme, les Quadrupedes et les Oiseaux; Par P. Flourens, Secretaire Perpeuel de L’Academie Royale des Sciences (Institut de France), Membre des Societes Royales de Londres Et Edimbourg, des Academies Royales des Sciences de Stockholm, Munich, Turin, Etc., Etc., Professeur de Physiologie Comparee au Museum D’Histoire Naturelle de Paris. Accompagnes de Huit Planches gravees et coloriees. Paris. Chez J.-B. Bailliere, Libraire de L’Academie Royale de Medecine, Rue de L’Ecole-De-Medecine, 17. A Londres, Chez H. Bailliere, 219, Regent Street. 1844.
Brown half leather binding with marbled paper over boards. Gold text on spine. Leather well preserved, but several scuffs, chips, and dents of paper covered portions of boards. Marbled end papers. Variable foxing (mild to moderate) throughout. Eight anatomic plates, in black and white and color. Text in French. Very large, well-retained, margins, though page 26 and first plate trimmed slightly smaller along bottom margin. Ribbon marker intact. Plates 3 and 4 consecutive leaves but bound in reverse order. Damp stain to top right corner for most of the leaves, generally far from text and images, but into border of final plate, but not into image.
Ffep, blank, half title (advertisements on verso), full title, 4 pgs preface, 1 – 101 numbered continuously but plates numbered 1 – 5, 1 & 2, 1, errata, table. Total of 8 plates.
Measures: 12 ½ x 9 ½ x 5/8 inches.
“Flourens removed the cerebrum and cerebellum in pigeons, showing maintenance of reflexes with loss of cerebration in the former case and disturbance of equilibrium in the latter case. Thus he demonstrated that the cerebrum is the organ of thought and the cerebellum the organ controlling the co-ordination of body movements and of will-power.” (G-M 1391)
Flourens (1794 – 1867) was one among several who attributed the discovery that the anterior root is motor, and the dorsal sensory, to Charles Bell (though Francois Magendie was the real discoverer of that fact) (G-M 1256). He published “experimental proof that vision depends on the integrity of the cerebral cortex” (G-M 1493), and also “showed that lesion of the semicircular canals produces motor incoordination and loss of equilibrium” (G-M 1557). “On 8 March 1847, Flourens announced that chloroform had an anaesthetic effect analogous to that of ether. Little notice seems to have been taken of his paper, but later in the year Simpson independently demonstrated the value of chloroform” (G-M 5654).
“Flourens was one of the French giants in the production of basic experimental neurologic researches for which the nineteenth century was so notable in France.” (Heirs of Hippocrates 878.)
