CHEYNE, JOHN M.D.

An Essay on Hydrocephalus Acutus, or Dropsy in the Brain. Edinburgh: Mundell, Doig, and Stevenson, 1808. First edition. Publisher's original brown boards, neatly rebacked in paper with a modern label. Boxed with [Idem]. Cases of Apoplexy and Lethargy: With Observations upon the Comatose Diseases. London: Thomas Underwood, 1812. First edition. Publisher's original blue boards, neatly rebacked in paper with a modern label. The two works are housed together in a calf-backed brown cloth fitted case. The first work 10 x 6 1/8 inches (25.5 x 16.25 cm); viii, 218, [2] pp. ads. The second 9 x 5 1/2 inches (22.5 x 14 cm); viii, 224 pp., with five plates of cerebral dissections. Uncut copies in original boards, with some toning and spotting, but generally attractive examples, both with the early ownership indications of Michael Brody, a physician of Limerick, Ireland.

Two pioneering works of neuropathology, both rare in original publisher's boards. Of the first "Cheyne's essay is one of the first noteworthy monographs on neuropathology to appear in the nineteenth century. It contains the first description of acute hydrocephalus or basilar (tuberculous) meningitis, a disease that primarily affects children" (Norman 472). Garrison-Morton-Norman 4635. Of the second "Cheyne believed that cerebral anaemia might be the cause of apoplexy and described pathological cases of cerebral infarction and of cerebral haemorrhage. The work contains the first illustration of a subcutaneous haemorrhage." Garrison-Morton-Norman 4519.1.