KAEMPFER, Engelbert.- Histoire naturelle, civile, et ecclesiastique de l’Empire du Japon...- A La Haye: Chez P. ...

KAEMPFER, Engelbert.- Histoire naturelle, civile, et ecclesiastique de l’Empire du Japon...- A La Haye: Chez P. Gosse & J. Neaulme, 1729.- 2 vols. in 1: 1 portada grav., 45 [i. é 43] gravuras; 30 cm.- E.
Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), German physician and vajante, born in Lemgo (Westphalia), traveled extensively in Eastern Europe, the Middle and Far East. In 1669 he arrived in Jakarta (Indonesia) and the following year in Japan, as a doctor, at the service of the Dutch East India Company, where he would stay for two years. Kaemper was the introducer of acupuncture in Europe, where he returned definitively in 1693. His manuscripts, which are now in the British Museum, were purchased by Sir Hans Sloane, who published them in English in 1727 and in the present edition of 1729, in the French version. The collation of the two volumes is as follows: I - [8], LII, 217, [1 br.] p.; II - [4], 313, [1]. 96 p. The prints are all gathered in tome I, after the respective index, lacking engravings VII and XI belonging to the first tome. The volume (with the two volumes together), very worn, presents serious imperfections, namely: generalized wormholes, mainly marginal, but deeper in the last leaves of each one of the two volumes; the engravings, in general clean and well folded, the vast majority not showing cuts, with the exception of engravings 17 to 29 which are affected, although tangentially. Heraldic ex-libris on the back cover: Francisci Petit Doct. Med. Full sheepskin binding of the time, badly damaged, with the covers almost loose. Brunet, III, 638. Cordier (Japonica), 416. Cox (Travel), I, p. 332.