In-4° relié plein veau de l'époque, [10], xvii [1], 404 [40 pages. 13 planches hors-texte dont celles, célèbres, sur les hermaphrodites. After studying at the Ecole de Saint-Côme in Paris, Arnaud de Ronsil established himself in London, where he attained a brilliant reputation as a surgeon. He was particularly interested in hernia and in deformities of the genitals. The present work includes Arnaud's long illustrated "Dissertation sur les hermaphrodites," two memoirs on testicles (including one on problems of testicle descent peculiar to priests!), two memoirs on hernias of the epiploon (omentum majus) and crura, and a French translation (entitled "Recherches sur les hernies de naissance") of chapter IX of William Hunter's Medical Commentaries (1762), which includes John Hunter's "Observations on the state of the testis in the foetus, and on the hernia congenita." Other chapters are devoted to aneurisms and various surgical instruments. Waller 475. - - - This is the first time that we encounter the concept of the "perfect hermaphrodite", i.e. a person who is capable of both producing sperm and becoming pregnant. The concept of the "imperfect hermaprodite" also existed, referring to one who is not able to procreate and having characters of both sexes but in incomplete form." "The existence of the condition of "perfect hermaphroditism" was confirmed by other surgeons. In 1768 George Arnaud de Ronsil described a famous case dating from 1663 in Valence, France: "Two young persons were married and some time later they were pregnant one of the other. They were persecuted as criminals, found guilty of an abominable crime and condemned to the fire, but Laurent Matheu, a Spanish doctor who was consulted about the case at the very moment that they were being taken to the place of the execution, decided in their favour, that the Church had given them the power of being United, and of being only one body." P.Santoni-Rugiu & P.J. Sykes, A History of Plastic Surgery (2007), pp.260-261 "Even if fanciful illustrations of hermaphrodites had occured several times in books and prints, the figures in Arnaud`s work and the two copperplates by Moreau le Jeune seem to be the earliest depictions in printed form of this phenomena drawn d`après nature."
