INSCRIBED TO HIS MENTOR RANVIER. Pathologie Comparee de l'Osteomalacie Chez l'Homme et les Animaux Domestiques [Comparative Pathology of Osteomalacia in Humans and Domestic Animals]

Paris: P. Asselin, 1874. First edition.

1871 EARLY MONOGRAPH ON OSTEOMALACIA IN HUMANS AND ANIMALS 50 YEARS BEFORE DISCOVERY OF VITAMIN D.

16x25 cm softcover, blue paper covers, printed title to cover and spine, inscribed and signed in ink top of half-title page, "A mon cher Maitre, Mr Ranvier/ Temoignage de reconnaissance/ Dr Paul Bouley", 132 pp, Table of Contents, Legend to Plates, 4 lithographic plates. Handstamp "Histologie College de France" and ink inscription, "Mr Ranvier" top of cover, soiling to covers, light browning to page edges, text pages and plates clean and unmarked, very good minus in archival case with folding flaps. CONTENTS: I. History; II. Pathologic anatomy; III. Etiologies--nature of the disease. Heredity, age, sex, pregnacy and nursing, hygiene, nutrition, skeletal softening in domestic animals, constitution--influence of diatheses, nature of the disease; IV. Symptoms. Duration, progression and outcomes, character of urine, senile form of osteomalacia, treatment. CONCLUSIONS: 1. Osteomalacia is probably an inflammatory process, a variety of osteitis, without tendency to resolve, in which the decalcified osseous tissue disappears, and the marrow undergoes major transformation; 2, Adult disease can equally affect the aged: senile form of osteomalacia; 3. Of all causes generally known to favor its development, the influence of only one has been demonstrated in both women and animals--the influence of the state of gestation.; 4. Symptoms that characterize the clinical presentation include pain, softening, deformity, and fragility; 5. Death is the rule; improvement or recovery the exception.

PAUL BOULEY was physician on the Faculty of Medicine, Paris. His uncle was physician at the Necker Hospital (Paris), and his father was a member of the Institute and Academy of Medicine, as well as Inspector General of the Veterinary Schools. Bouley earned his MD from the Paris Faculty of Medicine by defense of this publication that served as his thesis, 27 March, 1874. Faculty at the time included Paul Broca (1824-1880), Jean-Martin Charcot (1825 – 1893), and Jean Cruveilhier (1791 – 1874). The book offered here was inscribed to his mentor Louis-Antoine Ranvier (1835-1922), one of the most prominent histologists of the late 19th century and chairman of General Anatomy at the Collège de France. Ranvier abandoned pathological studies in 1867 and became an assistant of Claude Bernard (1813 – 1878), one of the greatest physiologists of the 19th century.