Bistouries, Lint and Compresses, Diderot Chirurgie Plate II, circa 1772

An original antique copper engraving, uncolored, showing instruments and dressings in twenty three numbered figures. At the top left are three folding bistouries with mottled scales and rosette rivets, their blades straight, curved and sharply pointed (Figs. 1 to 3). Beside them are a long rod with a spoon head (Fig. 4), a long rod with a notched, lobed tip (Fig. 5) and a cleft spatula on an ornamented baluster handle ending in an oval loop (Fig. 6). Pads of lint follow, some with a long thread (Figs. 7 to 11). The lower half is given to compresses cut to shape: a square, two rectangles and a triangle (Figs. 12 to 15), a square cut into a Maltese cross (Fig. 16), three crossed strips (Fig. 17), a slit compress (Fig. 18) and two strips slit alternately from either end (Figs. 19 and 20), with rolled bandage ends and a slotted strip (Figs. 21 to 23).

The plate number "Pl. II." is lettered at the top right outside the border, the section title "Chirurgie." is centered beneath the border, and the page number "63", without a stop, is at the lower left. It is signed at the lower right, just below the border, with the conjoined AB monogram followed by "s.", the mark the Venetian engraver Antonio Baratti used on the Livorno plates (his full signature, "Antonio Baratti s.", is lettered on Pl. XII of this section).

The Encyclopédie of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert was accompanied by volumes of engraved plates, the Recueil de planches, and this plate comes from their Chirurgie section in the Livorno edition published by Giuseppe Aubert, whose plate volumes appeared between 1771 and 1778. Each numbered figure is keyed to an explanation printed in the text volume, which is not part of the sheet.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.