Beschreibung:

VALSALVA, Antonio Maria (1666-1723). De aure humana tractatus . Bologna: Constantino Pisari, 1704. 4 o (230 x 166 mm). 10 engraved plates. (Some pale dampstaining, a few marginal ink stains.) Late 18th-century vellum gilt. Provenance : Frank G. Burch (bookplate). FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST FULL ACCOUNT OF THE MINUTE ANATOMY OF THE EAR. Valsalva is best remembered for this treatise on the ear, "in which he described and depicted its most minute muscles and nerves. He divided the ear into 'external,' 'middle,' and 'internal'; his method of inflating the middle ear (Valsalva's manoeuvre) is still practised" (Garrison-Morton). It also includes a description of "Valsalva's dysphagia. Valsalva was responsible for naming the tube in the middle ear the "Eustachian tube," after Bartolomeo Eustachi, his predecessor who provided the first post-classical account of the tube in his pioneering treatise on the ear ( De auditus organis , published in his Opuscula anatomica in 1564). Garrison-Morton 1546; Norman 2125.