Description

STRAUS-DURCKHEIM (Hercule), Traité pratique et théorique d’anatomie comparative, Paris, Méquignon-Marvis, 1842.

2 tomes in one volume 8vo of (4), XVI, 434 pages and one folding table then (4), 435, (1) pages and 4 plates ; contemporary half-calf.

First edition, very rare, of this of this text triply important for the history of microscopy, for the conservation of anatomical preparations and for comparative anatomy.

“Fraunhofer’s microscope came to play a conspicuous part in the early development of the continental microscope. The first step was taken by Hercule Straus-Durckheim, who was a comparative anatomist in Paris and a pupil of the renowned Georges Cuvier. For some years Straus-Durckheim studied all kinds of animals, from humans to the smallest insects, and relates that for his most delicate dissections he used a microscope that had small dimensions. Fraunhofer’s drum microscope was then the only compound microscope of smallish size and was clearly Straus-Durckheim’s inspiration for the microscope which, even before 1830, he had begun to design, and of which in 1842 he published a description in the book Traité pratique et théorique d’anatomie comparative. In the foreword he does not conceal his disdain for contemporary microscopes. Those who make them, he write, do not understand the use of them, and they seem never to use them themselves. Nor do they know the needs of the user, and neither scientists nor instrument makers ever seem to have collaborated on the design of a microscope. The microscope are unsuitable for dissecting delicate or small specimens like the mouthparts of insects or even smaller objects, which require complete control of the hand and fingers that guide the instruments in order to make movements scarcely exceeding one twentieth of a millimeter, for this demands that the observer can see what he is doing in the microscope. Most microscopes, he continues, are so tall that they tower above the head of the observer when he sits at the table to work with them, and as for horizontal micorscope they are even less suitable, because they oblige the anatomist to stretch his arms out in front of him in a posture that is so tiring that it makes dissection impossible […] After this experience, Straus-Durckheim set the dimensions of his microscopes so that he could sit at a table and work comfortably while observing the specimen through the eyepiece […] He handed over his drawings of the microscope, showing precise dimensions, to the instrument makers Achille Trécourt and Georges Oberheauser in Paris, who mad the two instruments to his instructions. […] As the image of the object in the compound microscope is inverted, which hampers dissection, in Straus-Durckheim provided the microscopes with a tube with an extra objective which erected image […] Straus-Durckheim was the first researcher to give detailed and well-defined requirements for a compound microscope with dimensions which took account of human anatomy. The most interesting of his measurements are the size of the stage and its height above the workbench, the overall height of the instruments, and particulary the lenght of the body-tube, which is very close to 160 mm, which with a few exceptions later became the standard for continental microscopes, and had been since used in nearly all microscopes until the introduction of infinity-corrected objectives. The first microscope of Straus-Durckheim’s design were made about 1835 by Trécourt and Oberheauser.” (Moe, The Story of the microcope, pages 186-191).

Despite few foxings, a good copy.