from) Traité des convulsions et des mouvemens convulsifs qu’on appelle à présent vapeurs, par M. Chastelain.”

 “ As women experience more serenity than men  the most frequent cause of their convulsions and convulsive moments is serenity which accumulates more often in the ovaries or the glands of the mesentery than the folds of the brain or the ventricles. “

759J   M. Jean  Châstelain ±1715 (professeur de l’Université de Montpellier1697-1715).

Traité des convulsions et des mouvemens convulsifs qu’on appelle à présent vapeurs, par M. Chastelain.

Lyon : Anisson et Posuel,1691                               Price   $1,900

Octavo, 13 X 8 cm, Signatures a6, A-K12. Bound in full contemporary sheep over gilt spine with title. a nice original copy, slight bookworm damage on the title page and second leaf, otherwise an excellent internal copy.

In the entry for Chastelain in Eloy’s ‘Dictionnaire historique’ it is stated that, according to Astruc, Chastelain was the first professor to promulgate Harvey’s doctrines at

Montpellier (‘Il m’a pourtant dit qu’il étoit le premier qui eût soutenu la circulation dans les écoles’). Monsieur Chastelain, was  Conseiller du Roi & Professeur roial in medecine, de l’Université de Montpellier. During this role he was called for consultation in Bordeaux by his colleague Demery, with a young lady of condition “attacked by convulsion and periodic convulsive movements” … he wrote this treatise which was only to be a chapter in a general history of diseases which never saw the light of day. But in this book we get a glimpse of his ideas about Convulsions.  Jean Chastelain is one of four authors to have treated diseases of the nervous system in Montpellier with Lazare Riviere, J. Lazerme and Boissier des Sauvages.  

More than typical work of the late seventeenth century that blends traditional humoralism with iatromechanism. This book considers true cases and actual mechanisms in the brain and body. 

Wellcome cat. of printed book; 17456;A, Krivatsy, NLM 2417.

Not in Garrison-Morton nor in Castiglioni. 

 There is a variant printed the same year in Paris with the sole indication of Anisson. (Inventaire de la Collection Anisson sur l’histoire de l’imprimerie et la librairie principalement a Paris) Variant bears the imprint: A Lyon & se vend a Paris, : Chez J. Anisson, directeur de l’imprimerie Roiale, ruë S. Jaques, vis-à-vis la ruë des Mathurins.