Abstract
MESSRS. DAVIS AND ORIOLI'S latest Catalogue. No. 125 Classics of Science and Medicine, is a lavishly illustrated production containing 444 items. The field covered includes physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, biology, medicine and surgery. Many outstanding works in all these branches of knowledge are offered for sale. Among the authors represented, often by several of their works, in first or early editions, are the following,selected more or less at random: Robert Boyle, Roger Bacon, Descartes, Galileo, William Gilbert, William Harvey, Hippocrates, Robert Hooke, James Hutton, Christian Huygens, Johannes de Ketham, Lavoisier, Sir Isaac Newton, Ambroise Pare, Pasteur, Scheele, and Vesalius. The prices asked, and presumably obtainable, are in many cases high; and are an indication of the marked trend in recent years for early scientific and medical works to appreciate in value. An interesting sidelight as to how the scarcity, as opposed to the absolute scientific importance, of a book may affect values is afforded by a comparison of the prices asked for James Hutton's “Theory of the Earth” (£175) on one hand, and Newton's “Principia” (1st edition, 2nd issue, £130) on the other. It has long been realized that copies of the former are extremely difficult to find, and also that it was an epoch-making work; yet it can scarcely be claimed that it ranks in importance with Newton's magnum opus.
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Catalogue of Historical Scientific Books. Nature 158, 869–870 (1946). https://doi.org/10.1038/158869f0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/158869f0