Guest Post from John Martin Rare Book Room
At Hardin Library of Health Sciences
DU VERNEY, JOSEPH (1648-1730). A treatise of the organ of hearing: containing the structure, the uses, and the diseases of all the parts of the ear. 1737.
Hi, my name is Carlisle Isley, and I am a University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science practicum student working in the John Martin Rare Book Room this fall.
I'm introducing you to this book because I have always been fascinated with how the ear, nose, and throat, seemingly small parts of the human body, are connected and can impact our daily quality of life. Interestingly enough, we can thank Sam Baker, a bookseller from the 1700s with a bookshop in London, for A treatise…
Baker commissioned Du Verney's work to sell in his shop down the street from the Angel and Crown ale house in Covent Garden. Baker eventually transformed his bookshop into an auction house for books and manuscripts. Upon his death, he bequeathed his share of the auction house to his nephew, John Sotheby, who would lend his name to the now world-famous Sotheby's auction house.
Joseph Du Verney was an anatomical lecturer and dissection demonstrator at Jardin Du Roi, an early medical plant garden. During the reign of King Louis XIV, theatrical anatomy was performed in public spaces, but bodies could be hard to come by. Body snatching and grave robbing were common. Society was not yet comfortable with donating bodies to science.
It was common to have amphitheaters where students could observe dissections, and Du Verney, with his "dramatic, rhetorical and anatomical skills," drew crowds of people. Du Verney conducted lectures and dissections for the Paris Academy of Science, including for the heir apparent to the French throne and royal courtiers. He also lectured to medical students at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital.
Du Verney corrected beliefs that the Eustachian tube was an avenue for breathing or hearing by showing it was a channel through which air is renewed to the tympanic cavity. He explained the mechanism of bone conduction and gave an accurate account of the bony labyrinth. He greatly advanced knowledge in the physiology of hearing with his theory of hearing and communication. His theories helped inform the work of the 19th-century biophysicist and inventor Herman Ludwig Ferdinand Von Helmholtz, who was the first to measure the speed of a nerve impulse.
Prior to this book joining the John Martin Rare Book Room, it circulated in the main collection as part of the Hardin Library. During its time in the Hardin Collection, the book was heavily used and at some point, one illustration "went missing." When paging through the book, one will notice a photocopied page was inserted to replace the missing illustration. More than likely, library staff realized the illustration was missing and contacted another institution to request a photocopy from their copy of the text.
For more, contact John Martin Rare Book Room