Observations sur les maladies épidémiques (Année 1770) [with] Collection d'observations sur les maladies et constitutions épidémiques [Three Volumes] by Lépecq de la Cloture, Louis - 1778

Paris / Rouen: De l'impr. de Vincent / Chez Didot et Méquignon; A Rouen: De l'imprimerie privilégiée, 1778. First editions. Full continental cat's paw calf, spine with five raised bands, two morocco lettering pieces, red on two volumes, brown and tan on the other, four compartments decorated with gilt florals, board edges ruled in gilt, marbled endpapers, all edges red. Spines rubbed, one volume with shallow chip at head of spine and small chip at lower edge, a few scuff marks to boards, otherwise bindings solid, leaves clean, a very good set.. cxxxiij, [3], 420 pp; xvi, 595, [6], [599] -1076 pp. 4to. Full titles: Volume I: Observations sur les maladies épidémiques, ouvrage rédigé d'après le tableau des epidémiques d'Hippocrate, et dans lequel on indique la meilleure méthode d'observer ce genre de maladies ... Publié par ordre du gouvernement, et aux fraix du roi. Volumes 2-3: Collection d'observations sur les maladies et constitutions épidémiques; ouvrage qui expose une suite de quinze années d'observations, & dans lequel les épidémies, les constitutions régnantes & intercurrentes, sont liées, selon le voeu d'Hippocrate, avec les causes météorologiques, locales & relatives aux différens climats, ainsi qu'avec l'histoire naturelle & médicale de la Normandie. On y a joint un appendix sur l'ordre des constitutions épidémiques ... Pub. par ordre du gouvernement ...This second set being a supplement to the first. Louis Lépecq de la Cloture (1736-1804), a Rouen physician and professor of Surgery, was part of a new generation of medical thinkers inspired by the scientific revolution and the enlightenment..."to study disease and environment in more exact terms by coordinating climatic and clinical observations... [They represented] a new kind of health activist who looked beyond the patient's bedside and thought about the broad environmental factors that shaped human disease," (Quinlan: The Great Nation in Decline: sex, modernity and health crises in revolutionary France c. 1750-1850, p. 64). The culmination of this work in France was these two sophisticated topographies on disease in Normandy in which Lepecq, who worked on the issue for fifteen years, provided both case histories as well as detailed analyzes of epidemics and their relationship to climate, geography, water sources, and local customs, writing in his first work that doctors must study sickness in its natural habitat before they could treat large-scale health issues. Two very important 18th century works on Epidemiology. Brunet III, pp. 990-991. Graesse IV, p. 169. Frere: Bibliographe Normand, II pp. 212-3. Bayle & Thillaye II, p. 616.