A Dissertation on the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals. By M. A. Haller, M.D. President of the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen, Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, &c. Translated from the Latin. With a Preface by M. Tissot, M.D.

HALLER, Albrecht von

Published by London: Printed for J. Nourse at the Lamb opposite Katherine-street in the Strand, 1755.

About this Item

2 leaves [half-title, title page], xxxii [Tissot's Preface], 79, [1, publisher's ad] pp. Contemporary 3/4-leather and marbled boards, recently rebacked with new leather spine. Bookplate of James Tait Goodrich. Blank vertical margin of half-title chipped, as is blank vertical margin of last leaf. Text lightly browned. Very Good. First Edition in English of De partibus corporis humani sensilibus et irritabilibus. Commentarii Societatis Regia Scientiarum Gottingensis ad annum 1752, 2: 114-58, 1753 (read April 22 and May 6, 1752; Garrison-Morton 587). The title of Haller's work on p. 1 is "A Treatise on the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals." The "Supplement by the Author" is pp. 67-73: "Having seen, since the publication of my essay on Irritability, M. le Cat's objections to what I had advanced, in a paper which he sent to the Royal Academy at Berlin, I thought it incumbent upon me to answer it in a few words." The "An Essay on the Cause of the Motion of the Heart Read November 10th, 1751" is pp. 74-79: "Although this essay is independent of that which was read before, and even appeared sooner; yet as it contains experiments upon the Irritability of the heart, which determine the cause of these motions, I imagine it will be agreeable to the reader to see it subjoined to the preceding, seeing both may be considered as pieces belonging to the same subject, which reciprocally establish each other." The French translation by Tissot was published in 1755: "Dissertation sur les parties irritables et sensibles des animaux" (Lausanne: M.M. Bosquet, 1755). The English translator is unknown. The English translation is based on Tissot's French translation and includes Tissot's 32-page Preface. "This work, whose author was then forty-five years old and at the height of his fame as a professor at the newly founded University of Goettingen, is a landmark in the history of physiology in general and of muscular physiology in particular. But unlike other great scientific contributions it does not contain an entirely new discovery. For the phenomena of sensibility and irritability were known long before Haller and the very terms had been coined by others. The significance Haller's contribution lies in the method by which he approached the subject. . . . In contrast to all such [other] theories Haller gave to irritability and sensibility a purely experimental definition. He called all parts irritable where a contraction could be observed and, accordingly, he defined all those parts as sensible whose stimulation was either consciously noticed, if the experiment was conducted upon a human being, or caused signs of unrest in animals. On this basis Haller submitted all parts of the body to a long series of experiments performed by himself and his pupils. . . . As a result he arrived at the conclusion that only those parts which are supplied with nerves possess sensibility, whereas irritability is a property of the muscular fibres. Thus sensibility and irritability were clearly distinguished and were considered independent of each other. . . . Apart from the stimulating effect Haller's treatise exercised on the physiologists of his epoch, it is an outstanding document of indefatigable experimentation and clear reasoning. As such it has become a classic. . . . In 1755 the Swiss physician and Haller's friend, Simon André Tissot (1728-1797), published a French translation of the emended Haller text together with that of another short paper of Haller's on the cause of the movement of the heart. Tissot added moreover a lengthy and enthusiastic preface and Haller himself contributed a short supplement. The anonymous English translation which appeared in the same year is obviously based on the French edition of Tissot, whose name it even mentions on the title page. It, too, contains Tissot's preface, Haller's supplement and the Essay on the Cause of the Motion of the Heart" (O. Temkin, "Introduction" to 1936 reprint edition, pp. 651-652, 655).

Seller Inventory # 17215

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Dissertation on the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals. By M. A. Haller, M.D. President of the Royal Society of Sciences at Gottingen, Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, &c. Translated from the Latin. With a Preface by M. Tissot, M.D.
• Publisher: London: Printed for J. Nourse at the Lamb opposite Katherine-street in the Strand, 1755.
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good