Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2345

ANTONIO SCARPA (1752-1832). [Saggio di osservazioni e d'esperienze sulle principali malattie degli occhi. French ] Traité des principales maladies des yeux, par Antoine Scarpa. Traduit de l'Italien en français sur le cinquième et dernier ed., accompagné de notes et d'additions, MM. Fournier-Pescay et Begin. Paris: Méquignon-Marvis., 1821. 5th (xxvii, 484 pages) (422 pages) 4 leaves of plates : illustrations; 21 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 1103

Being published 20 years after its first publication, this Parisian edition of Scarpa’s classic work on ophthalmology contains over 300 pages of additions. These additions, authored by François Fournier-Pescay (1771-1833) and Louis-Jacques Bégin (1793-1859), amount to original work that uses Scarpa’s as a foundation. By the time of this book’s publication, Fournier-Pescay was already an established and respected doctor. This is particularly of note when considering his origins in Saint-Domingue (known today as Haiti) from a family of African descent. Having been educated in medicine in Paris and Bordeaux, this earned Fournier-Pescay the distinction of the first doctor of African descent in Europe. His career included combat medical practice, original scholarship, professor of internal pathology, and a founder of the Medical Society of Brussels in 1795. Though an intriguing figure in medical history, there is little modern scholarship worldwide that highlights his corpus His collaboration with Begin previously produced an orthopedics chapter in the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales in 1819. This edition includes 2 volumes in quarter bound leather with marbled edges and gilt spines. The second volume has 4 fold-out engravings; 2 depicting surgical tools, another showing maladies of the eye, and the last an illustration of the anatomy of the face/eye.

See Related Record(s): 1106

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 5835; Waller 8543