‘Animalcules’ Up Close
BAKER, Henry. Beyträge zu nützlichem und vergnügendem Gebrauch und Verbesserung des Microscopii: in zwey Theilen … Aus dem Englischen ins Deutsche übersetzt. Augsburg: Eberhard Klett. 1754.
8vo. Contemporary carta rustica, printed spine label; pp. [20], 576, [16 (index)], with large folding engraved frontispiece diagram and 16 folding engraved plates at end; typographic headpieces, woodcut tailpieces and initials; half of spine label wanting, boards somewhat worn, small split to upper joint; lightly browned throughout, a few small wormtracks to inner margin of final quire (not touching text); generally very good; printed ownership label of Joannis Antonii Josephi Scrinci to verso of title and ownership inscription ‘Scrinci’ to recto; early ownership inscription to title, deleted in ink with subsequent ink ownership inscription ‘Ad usum Adamti Voigt Sch. Piar. 1770’; remnant of ?nineteenth-century bookseller’s ticket to front pastedown.
First German edition of Employment for the Microscope, first published in English in 1753 as a companion to his popular guide for amateur scientists The Microscope Made Easy, our copy owned by a contemporary Bohemian professor of medicine, experimental chemistry, and physics.
Microscopist, son-in-law of Daniel Defoe, and teacher of deaf people Henry Baker (1698–1774) won the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1744 for his microscopical observations on the crystallization of saline particles, to which much of the first part of this book is devoted. The second part is more concerned with microbiology and includes the first description of dinoflagellates, marine plankton here called ‘Animalcules which cause the Sparkling Light in Sea Water’. Known for his use of simple, easily understood language, Baker ‘had the rare gift of communicating his knowledge of, and above all his enthusiasm for, the microscope to others. This was what made his two books so widely popular’ (DSB I, 411).
Bound as the frontispiece is an engraved advertisement for a microscope sold in Augsburg by Georg Friedrich Brander (1713–1783), a modified version of the microscope developed in London by John Cuff at the suggestion of Henry Baker.
Provenance:
1. From the library of Johann Anton Joseph (Jan Antonín Josef) Scrinci (1697–1773), a Bohemian physician and university professor of medicine, as well as of experimental chemistry and physics at Prague’s Charles University. Born into an Italian family of master builders, Scrinci gained renown for identifying an outbreak of ergotism in northern Bohemia, a discovery that led to his appointment at Charles University in 1739.
As a full professor, he adopted a practical, demonstration-based scientific method in the manner of Boerhaave, making his lectures particularly popular with students. Twice rector of the university, he withdrew from teaching after the Prussian siege of Prague in 1758.
2. 1770 ownership inscription of Piarist Adam Voigt, librarian in Vienna; according to Abafi he was professor at the University of Vienna and custodian of the academic library and the imperial coin collection (Geschichte der Freimaurerei in Österreich-Ungarn IV, p. 318).
VD18 10530770; Nissen ZBI 201; Wellcome II, p. 88.
SKU: 2096050