Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 961.5

ANTOINE COURT DE GéBELIN (1725-1784) Histoire naturelle de la parole, ou Précis de l’origine du langage & de la grammaire universelle 1776 First Separate edition 400 p. 3 plates (1 col.) 20 cm.

Gebelin, a celebrated French scholar, conceived a work to embody his complex theory of language, mythology & culture. After many years of studious devotion, he published (in 1775) the first volume of this vast undertaking with the title “Le Monde Primitif”. Here we have the first separate edition of the third volume of “Le Monde Primitif” containing the first appearance of the famous color printed plate of the larynx (illustrated in 6 figures) by Gartier D’Agoty (Dagoty). The latter achieved a greater life-like quality in colour than had been achieved by the chiaroscuro colour plates in Aselli’s “De Lactibus sive Lacteis Venis” (1627). The explanation for d’Agoty’s plate was provided by the celebrated surgeon Dessault. His great project had for its goal to set out to reconstruct the high primeval civilization. Reinterpreting Classical and Renaissance evocation of the Golden Age in mankind's early history, Court de Gébelin asserted that the primitive worldwide civilization had been advanced and enlightened. He is the intellectual grandfather of much of modern occultism. His centers of focus are the familiar ones of universal origins of languages in deep time and the hermeneutics of symbolism. While his views on hermeneutics and religious matters were largely conservative, his original ideas and research on the origin of language earn him a place among pioneers of linguistics. Court de Gébelin presented dictionaries of etymology, what he called a universal grammar, and discourses on the origins of language. His volumes were so popular he republished them separately, as Histoire naturelle de la parole, ou Précis de l'Origine du Langage & de la Grammaire Universelle ("Natural history of the Word, or a sketch of the origins of language and of universal grammar"), in Paris, 1776.

John Martin M.D. Endowment