BLONDEL (Jaques [sic]).—A Physical Treatise on the Power of - Lot 38

BLONDEL (Jaques [sic]).—A Physical Treatise on the Power of the Imagination of Pregnant Women over the Fetus. Translated from the English by Albert Brun. Leiden: Gilbert Langerak & Theodore Lucht, 1737. In-8, hard vellum binding, speckled edges, modern bookplate on the flyleaf. [8 ff.], 181 pp. (incorrectly numbered 175), [1 p.], [5 ff.]. Title in red and black. First French translation of this work by Blondel (1666–1734), a French physician based in London, where he published this book in English in 1727. It is part of the long-standing debate, dating back to antiquity, between anti-imagionists and imagionists, the latter claiming that anomalies in newborns could be explained by the impression made on women’s imaginations due to their extreme sensitivity. Blondel belongs to the first category. In the supplement to the work, he lists several cases, such as that of Bartholin’s cat. Bartholin had claimed that in 1638, a woman from the city of Leiden, having been frightened by a cat that had crawled into her bed, gave birth to a child “well-formed in all its parts, except for the head, which resembled that of a cat.” ” Blondel refutes this “phenomenon” as well as others of the same nature. A rare and curious work.