Bernhard Siegrfried Albinus, Frederik Ruysch, & Jan Ladmiral Six pamphlets 1736-1741

Bernhard Siegrfried Albinus (1697-1770). Dissertatio de arteries et venis intestinorum hominis. Adjecta icon coloribus distincta. (1736).

Albinus. Dissertatio secunda. De sede et caussa coloris Aethiopum et caetorum hominum. (1737).

Frederik Ruysch (1638-1731). Icon durae matris in concava superficie visae. (1738).

Ruysch. Icon durae matris in convexa superficie visae. (1738).

Ruysch. Icon membranae vasculosae. (1738).

Jan Ladmiral (1698-1773). Effigies penis humani. (1741).

Lane Catalog Record

These six pamphlets, the first five of which were issued by the Dutch anatomist, Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, each contain one mezzotint printed by Jan Ladmiral (1698-1773). These six color prints, published between 1736 and 1741, are among the earliest examples of color printing, and certainly the earliest use of the process in medical or scientific books. Born in Normandy, the painter Jan Ladmiral and his younger brother Jacob were pupils of the artist Jacob Christoph le Blon (1667-1741), who had invented the process for printing color mezzotints using the three primary colors. This monumental invention le Blon taught to Ladmiral while Ladmiral was in London.

Much as the first printers viewed printing by moveable type as a less expensive way to reproduce texts that had previously been reproduced by manuscript copying, Le Blon viewed his process as a less expensive way of producing color paintings. Le Blon had formed a company called The Picture Office to produce color prints, and Choulant states that in 1721 Le Blon issued a separate print depicting the male sexual organs entitled Préparation anatomique des parties de l'homme, servants a la generation, faites sur les decouvertes les plus modernes. In 1725 Le Blon published an exceptionally rare little treatise on the process called Coloritto, and he produced a small number of artistic color prints. However, Le Blon's business failed and he re-established himself in Paris, and in 1739 obtained a patent for the use of his color printing process in France.

In spite of this Ladmiral represented the invention as his own. He offered to print colored anatomical plates for Albinus, who commissioned him to make the six plates that appear in this collection. Each of them conveys anatomical information much more subtly than could be conveyed from black and white engraving, and is too fine for hand-coloring. The Ladmiral plates form the first series of full-color anatomical color-printed illustrations ever made, and are extremely scarce. They are also the only color prints produced by Jan Ladmiral.

Choulant/Frank (p. 267) translates Albinus' comments on Ladmiral published in the first dissertation of 1736:

"It happened that that excellent and industrious painter John Ladmiral came to me and offered his services for making pictures colored after life in a sort of short hand kind of painting. To see what he could in this line I have a picture made which I have added to the dissertation."

In his second dissertation Albinus commented as follows, in Choulant/Frank's translation:

"These were made, and with no less workmanship, by that same Ladmiral who made the illustrations of veins and arteries of the intestines of a man (a work) which I published last year. From a burning and praiseworthy desire to show specimens of his matchless skill, he did not cease to entreat me until he prevailed upon me to give him a chance, etc."

The plate represents the skin and nails of a negro woman.

For the third pamphlet, containing a posthumous reproduction of a preparation by Frederik Ruysch the explanation of Ladmiral's color plate states that it was produced "in the colors of life, not painted with a brush, but printed from plates with a wonderful and unheard of ingenuity." (Choulant/Frank p. 268A). The texts accompanying the remaining three plates each refer to the color printing process used. The final image of the penis issued by Ladmiral in 1741 is the largest of the group.

That Ladmiral who lived until 1773 issued only six color prints would suggest a certain commercial failure of the process. The prints that he issued, while exceptionally beautiful, are small, and clearly issued in small printings. They could not have received much attention except from a small group of anatomists.

This very unusual volume, purchased by Lane Library from the London booksellers, Maggs Bros., in 1932, was bound in human skin for the private library of the physiologist and anthropologist, Hans Friedenthal (1870-1943). According to the website of the Magnus-Hirschfeld Institute, Friedenthal taught at the University of Berlin, and headed the "experimental biology" department at the Magnus-Hirschfeld Institute from 1919 and the "anthropological department" between 1922 and 1923. At the Institute, he did research on the effects of sexual hormones as well as on sexual differences. He was also involved in training of doctors and medical students.

In 1924, Friedenthal "was made honorary professor at the University of Berlin where he founded an "Institute of Mankind Studies," did research on the natural history of mankind, worked as a characterologist and ran a marriage guidance council. He maintained close ties with the Institute through his publications in the journal 'Die Ehe' ("Marriage") and as a member of the board of trustees." (http://me.in-berlin.de/~magnus/institut/en/personen/pers_13.html). This web page also includes a photograph of Friedenthal.

Friedenthal's professional interests in anthropology and sex may help to explain why he purchased these pamphlets. They may also suggest an explanation of why he commissioned the unique binding from human skin. The choice of human skin seems to have been inspired by Albinus' Dissertatio Secunda on the cause of skin color of an Ethiopian. The binding was sufficiently unusual that after its completion in 1911 the binder, Paul Kersten (1865-1943) described its production in the Zeitschrift f. Bücherfreunde, 1911, p. 264. According to C.D. O'Malley Kersten reported that he received the untanned skin from "the possessor" (probably Friedenthal). Kersten then took the skin, which measured 65 x 75 cm. to a tannery where it shrink one centimeter in the tanning process. O'Malley translated the remainder of Kersten's account as follows:

"The grain was noteworthy since to some extent it resembled a mixture of large-grained goatskin and pigskin; the portion representing the back had the course grain while the breast and belly areas were smaller grained. In thickness it corresponded to morocco leather, at the back 2mm., at the side 1mm. It had a very considerable toughness and was somewhat difficult to work to a smooth surface since the grain extended rather deeply into the skin, much as in pigskin; otherwise it felt like morocco leather, and were it not white it would be taken for such. . . . "

The front cover inset a magnificent plaque modeled and engraved in silver by the Weimar sculptor Prof. Elster, displaying the head of a negro and an example of a negroid skull. Above is the name of the sculptor and below the name of the owner, the whole represented as an ex-libris. The end-papers of the inner sides of the covers are made of moleskin and the fly-leaf of mole-grey silk." (Notes and Queries "Bound in Full Human Skin"J. Hist. Med. (October 1953) 447-48.)

Perhaps even more bizarre than the binding are the mole-skin endpapers which seem to have been made by gluing a series of moleskins with their luxurious black fur to the paste-down endpapers and framing these skins with silver inlays. As if this were not unusual enough, the book is enclosed in a black cloth clamshell box lined with yellow cloth woven in a Jacquard pattern showing the heart and lungs. On the outside of the box there is a kind of bizarre warning stamped in German on the upper cover. It may be translated, "Think when you are terrified by humans. . . . of your own human skin."

The binder, Paul Kersten, perhaps not unsurprisingly, produced several other bindings from human skin and published more than one article about them. These bindings and Kersten's publications on the topic are discussed in more detail by Lawrence S. Thompson in his article entitled "Tanned Human Skin" published in the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 1946 April; 34(2): 93-102

In addition to producing these exotic bindings and writing about them Kersten was the author of two textbooks on conventional bookbinding: L. Brade's Illustrieres Buchbinderbuch: Ein Lehr- und Hanbuch der gesamten Buchbinderei und aller in dieses Fach eingeschlagenden Techniken (Halle, 1921) and Der Exakte Bucheinband (Halle, 1923).

—J. Norman, 2006

Heirs of Hippocrates 841-846. Choulant/Frank 265-66 for Le Blon and 267-69 for Ladmiral.