Sale 2501 - Early Printed, Medical, Scientific & Travel Books, March 7, 2019

187 c   (LADMIRAL, JAN.) Albinus, Bernhard Siegfried. Dissertatio secunda de sede et caussa coloris Aethiopum et caeterorum hominum. Color mezzotint by Ladmiral mounted on blank leaf at end depicting an African woman’s thumbnail and skin samples from her breast and heel. [2], 16, [2] pages. 4to, 282x235 mm (with mezzotint measuring 117x161 mm), loose in separated and dampstained heavy brown paper wrappers; scattered foxing on text leaves. Leiden:Theodorus Haak & Amsterdam: Jacobus Graal & Henricus de Leth, 1736 [2,500/3,500] first edition of an essay on racial variation in the pigmentation of human skin.This lot and the next 3 comprise all but the first in a series of 6 pamphlets on miscellaneous anatomical subjects, each containing a print by Ladmiral, among the earliest medical illustrations in color. He produced these using the 3-color process invented by his teacher Jacob Christoph Le Blon, the basis of mod- ern color printing.The first publication in the series was a dissertation by Albinus on the blood vessels of the intestines. Choulant-Frank, page 267-68.