Jacob

1779 · 26212 — 1779. Wien apud Rudolphum Graeffer 1779 8° Titelvignette 176 pp.; Venetiis apud Franciscum ex Nicolao Pezzana 1779 64 pp.; Ledereinband d.Zt. mit reichl. Rückenvergoldung. Rare First Edition! Joseph Jakob von Plenck's 'Doctrina de morbis veneris' 1779 is the venereology counterpart to his famous 'Doctrina de morbis cutaneis' and one of the earliest systematic Latin handbooks devoted specifically to venereal diseases written from the perspective of an 18th-century Vienna-based clinician. It is important because it applies an Enlightenment-era classificatory and nosological framework to venereal diseases at a time when "morbus gallicus" and related conditions were still conceptually fluid. By systematizing syphilis gonorrhoea and other venereal affections into defined classes and species he helped move venereology from a predominantly empirical-practical art toward a more theoretically ordered branch of special pathology parallel to what he achieved for skin diseases. In the broader history of dermatology the 1779 first edition stands as an early link between cutaneous medicine and venereology in Central Europe foreshadowing the later 19th-century fusion of "Haut- und Geschlechtskrankheiten" as a combined specialty. Joseph Jakob von Plenck 1738/1735-1807 was a Hungarian-born physician who became professor in Vienna and is often named as the founder of Austrian dermatology. "In demselben ist keine einzige der damals bekannten Formen dieser Erkrankung übergangen." Lesky 511; Proksch II 438 Duparc - A very rare first Latin edition with only one copy recorded in the ICCU of this work by the renowned French physician Joseph Jacques Gardane who was my professor at the University of Montpellier: In this work the author describes a simple method for the treatment of venereal diseases. The author had already addressed the subject some ten years earlier in his work 'Recherches pratiques sur les différentes manières de traiter les maladies vénériennes' and the study presented here is a supplement to that work in which the author introduces a new simple method of treatment. Schönfeld 43; Richter 177-78; Hirsch-H. IV 590; Pusey Hist of Dermatology 57-58; Blake 356; Engelmann 434 unknown