De Morbo Gallico + The Force of the Mother's Imagination upon Her Foetus in Utero

De Morbo Gallico, Treatise of the French Disease bound with The Force of the Mother's Imagination upon Her Foetus in Utero

Daniel Turner; Ulrich von Hutten

London: Thomas Warner; John Clarke; J. Walthoe, [et al.],  1730

2 volumes in 1. Hardcover. [12], 110, [2] p.; 192 p. Bound in contemporary Cambridge-style leather. 4 raised bands. Good binding and cover. Wear to extremities.   Signature on title page, corner of title pages removed to excise another signature. Pages lightly tanned, with scattered foxing and toning.

Daniel Turner (1667-1741) was a London surgeon best known for his treatment of venereal disease and other diseases of the skin, later recognized as one of the founders of British dermatological studies, had become engaged in a pamphlet war with James Blondel on maternal powers of imagination shortly after the Mary Toft scandal, in which a women stated she gave birth to rabbits in 1726.  Blondel took aim on a new chapter in Turner’s 1726 Third Edition of "De Morbis Cutaneis. A Treatise of Diseases Incident to the Skin." Blundell confuted the plastic power attributed to the imagination of the mother during pregnancy and twelfth chapter of the treatise by Daniel Turner, devoted to maternal fancy as the cause of molae, and the theory in general.  This dispute would continue for the next 4 years, with Blundell advocating the ovist and preformationist position (associated with Harvey), in which all parts of the fetus already exist in the egg before conception.  Turner and the imaginationists would employ Newtonian ideas and terminology to show that a thoughts and imagination would affect their offspring and such actions, especially birthmarks on children could not be removed.

See Surgery, Skin and Syphilis: Daniel Turner's London (1667-1741), Wilson (1999); Monstrous Imagination, Hunt (1993) Surg-Gen. catalog.