Not long ago, the Wall Street Journal reported on a “hot market” for rare medical texts, citing last year's $2.2 million sale (after a high estimate of $1.2 million) for a 1555 copy of the Flemish doctor's De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem . Andreas Vesalius at Christie's. In fact, the market for these historical encyclopedias, anatomical atlases and surgical textbooks is rare. that it's hot, if only because there aren't enough editions of books like Francisco Bravo's Opera MedicinaliaNicolò Gervasi's Antidotarium Panormitanum and William Harvey De Motu Cordis walking around (Only one copy of the Opera Medicinaliathe first medical text printed in the Americas, still in its original form.) And it is noteworthy that the mega-million copy of the Fabrica was described by Vesalius himself.
There is, however, a shortage of less rare, less descriptive and less well-preserved medical documents in a range of price ranges—good news if you want to start collecting them. And when you start, you'll be in good company. Rare bookseller Jeremy M. Norman, in a 1985 article on Medical Legacywrote that “the modern enthusiasm for collecting early and early versions of medical history” can be traced back to the Father of Modern Medicine, Sir William Osler, whose library of 7,600 volumes went to McGill University when he died. Other notable collectors include pioneering neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing and Swedish surgeon Erik Waller, whose medical literature was so extensive that his Wikipedia bracket is not 'doctor' but 'collector.'
You don't have to be in medicine to start buying historical medical records, although it probably makes building a library more fun. The famous cerebrovascular neurosurgeon Dr. Eugene Flamm has been collecting for sixty years—the first Vesalius he bought as a resident, and that work began a lifelong passion for collecting antiquarian books covering the history of anatomy, medicine and surgery. and, more broadly, incunabula and books with interesting inscriptions. He sees the importance of early medical texts as many things: historically important, scientifically important and culturally important.
“An understanding of what has been done with all good intentions to patients over the last three, four or five hundred years gives one insight into our achievements and our shortcomings,” he told the Observer. “Of course, these books do not provide information about surgery today, but they keep one informed and honest about the limitations of complex surgery, even now. Besides all that, they are generally good things from a time when printing was fully developed, which seemed childless.”
The former president of the bibliophiliac Grolier Club in New York later amassed a collection of thousands of books documenting what he called the “scientific and intellectual milestones” of mankind. He said books should be considered intellectual investments, not financial ones. Budding collectors should first be interested in the subject and then explore it according to their own abilities and desire to learn.
But while many collectors with Brobdingnagian bookshelves give their large libraries to universities or other institutions to satisfy a personal desire for knowledge, Dr. Flamm, 88 years old, has mixed feelings about the future of his collection.
“It has always been my desire to bring my collection back to the market so that young collectors have the opportunity to acquire original books and keep them,” he said. The Christie's auction that opens online on January 14 and runs through January 28, he added, is the first step in implementing that plan. “If all books are institutionalized, we will destroy the spirit and importance of the collector.”
Among the 230 lots in the Fine Prints and Manuscripts comprising the Americana sale will be Incunabula from the Eugene S. Flamm Collection: early printed examples of encyclopedias, bibliographies, histories, medical illustrations, scientific works and other documents. There is a first and last edition of Ludovicus' Trilogium animae (high estimate: $12,000), with a woodcut of a brain by artist Albrecht Dürer. There is an illustrated first edition of Mundinus' Anatomia corporis humani (high estimate: $20,000), a work that reintroduces the concept of anatomical dissection. And there is Jacobus de Dondis' Aggregator, sive De medicinis simplicibus (maximum: $120,000), which is one of the first documents devoted entirely to medicine.
Other works from the collection of Dr. Flamm walking on the block includes that of Pliny the Elder Natural history (third edition tops $15,000; Italian first edition tops $150,000), Albert Magnus' Philosophia Pauperum (high estimate: $20,000) and Bartholomaeus Anglicus' Proprietatibus rerum (maximum: $100,000).
When I ask Dr. Flamm, who has selected several public exhibitions of works from his collection at places such as Johns Hopkins University and the Grolier Club, if there is a dream text he would like to receive, his answer is simple but will be accompanied by enthusiasm. collectors in all categories: “The list is too long to post.”
