The Gray Substance of the Medulla Oblongata and Trapezium

John Dean

Washington, D.C. : Smithsonian Institution, 1864

[First American Photographic Medical Book; History of Neurology and Neuroanatomy] Quarto, 29 x 23 cm. Bound in modern, quarter leather over marbled boards. Red spine label. Gilt to spine. Five raised bands.  Collated: [4], 75 pages. 16 plates, 10 of which are mounted photolithographs by L. H. Bradford reproducing photomicrographs by Dean, and 6 plates of Dean's drawings.  Scattered foxing. Upper corner of contents bumped.  "John Dean, a physician, pioneered the microscopic study of the central nervous system. His book, the first to offer photographic illustrations in neuroanatomy, was also the first American attempt to publish a photographic medical book. It is a classic in its field" - Grolier/Schwartz 52. Refs: Garrison-Morton 7331.  Burns, Early Medical Photography in America, 1229, 1248 p.  

  Oliver Wendell Holmes praised on this work: "Of all the microphotographs we have seen, those made by Dr. John Dean, of Boston, are the most remarkable for the light they throw on the minute structure of the body. The sections made by Dr. Dean are in themselves very beautiful specimens  ... when the enlarged image is suffered to delineate itself, as in Dr. Dean's views of the medulla oblongata, there is no room to question the exactness of the portraiture, and the distant student is able to form his own opinion as the original observer. These later achievements of Dr. Dean have excited much attention here and in Europe, and point to a new epoch of anatomical and physiological delineation." - Soundings from the Atlantic, p. 272-3.  Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 173, v. 16, art. 2. 

Contents: The form and structure of the gray susbstance of the medulla oblongata, human and mammalian; The form and structure of the trapezium, mammalian; Plates. Morphological changes in the medulla oblongata of the sheep; Morphological changes in the medulla oblongata of man; The hypoglossal nucleus and roots; The passage into the medulla of the posterior vesicular columns and tractus intermedio-lateralis; The vagus nucleus and roots; The glossopharyngeal nucleus and roots; The olivary bodies in man; The olivary bodies of mammalia; The antero-lateral nucleus; Morphological changes in the trapezium of the mammalia; The auditory nucleus and roots; The facial nucleus and roots; The abducens nucleus and roots; The upper olivary bodies; Methods of preparation.