Item #39926 Zur Chirurgie des Herzens und des Herzbeutels, in 'Archiv fur Klinische Chirurgie'. Ian FLEMING, Ludwig REHN.

Zur Chirurgie des Herzens und des Herzbeutels, in 'Archiv fur Klinische Chirurgie'.

Berlin: Verlag von August Hirshwald 1907. Pp.904. Original printed wrappers. Prof. Dr. Rehn's treatise appears on pp.723-778. A fine copy, in a folding protective case with gilt-titled orange leather label to spine and gilt crest to upper (some wear to box). This is an account of the first successful suture of the heart and an important paper in the evolution of cardiac surgery. "The Italian surgeons did some bold operating on the heart... the first successful suture was done by L. Rehn at Frankfort on the Main in 1896... Rehn's case was alive when he wrote this paper, over ten years after the operation had been performed" (Garrison, page 596). This copy is from the important library of future Bond novelist Ian Fleming, a famous 1930's book collector who, under the guidance of Percy Muir of London Booksellers Elkin Matthews, sought volumes and papers that changed the course of mankind. They assembled an impressive archive of the theories behind techological and social progress and advancement including eminent works by such authors as Charles Darwin (evolution), Albert Einstein (relativity), Marie Curie (radiation), Alexander Graham Bell (telephony), Heinrich Hertz (radio waves), Michael Faraday and Alexander Volta (electricity), Karl Marx (communism), Orville Wright (aviation), Francis Galton (fingerprinting) and Sigmund Freud (psychiatry). Muir later claimed it was one of the proudest achievements of his life, and at the landmark 'Printing and the Mind of Man' exhibition in July 1963 Fleming's provided 44 scientific books from his library, far exceeding any other private collector and second only to Cambridge University. Much to Muir's chagrin, Fleming insisted each volume be housed in buckram cases of his design, with a coloured morocco label to indicate subject; orange for pure science, green for medicine, etc. Muir disapproved of spending money on anything that wasn't a book. Following Fleming's death and some drawn-out negotiations, his collection was sold in 1970 to the University of Indiana, and is housed at their Lilly Library, along with the ms. to the majority Fleming's James Bond novels. 'A few' of the titles which were acquired by Fleming had been previously sold and are not part of the Lilly holdings- some may have been duplicates, where an upgrade had been sought, or perhaps an inscribed or annotated copy became available. For whatever reason, those copies that have made it into commerce are particularly scarce; I know of just three other titles- Einstein's Theory of Relativity [housed in the Ian Fleming Bibliographical Archive],Fuhlrott's Discovery of Neanderthal Man [sold at Christies, New York, June 2008] and Darwin's Origin of the Species [offered by an ABA member in 2010]. The present book is remarkable in its own right, but of further significance in that it is just one of a few known Fleming-owned scientific texts to surface; this was previously owned by the James Bond historian John Griswold (1950-2016). In 2008, to celebrate the launch of the Definitive Works of Ian Fleming in Limited Edition, some five books from the Fleming Collection were exhibited in London for the first time since the book were acquired by the Lilly Library thirty eight years previously. Item #39926

[SILVER, Joel] Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol.201; Twentieth-Century British Book Collectors (1999), pp.81-8.

Price: £5,000.00

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