Cannula, Trocar and Grooved Staffs, Diderot Chirurgie Plate IX, circa 1772

An original antique copper engraving, uncolored, setting out eleven instruments in rows across the plate. At the top is a long slotted cannula on a trough shaped handle with a finger ring (Fig. 1), and below it a trocar, its three sided point projecting from the tube (Fig. 2). Next come a tubular handle hinged to a curved blade (Fig. 3) and a forceps with long straight jaws (Fig. 4). Then come an oval band with a toothed clip (Fig. 5), a long flat band twisted into a loop (Fig. 6) and a short tube (Fig. 7). Below are a lance pointed blade on a riveted handle (Fig. 8), a grooved staff with a heart shaped handle bearing a small anchor mark (Fig. 9), a long shaft beveled at the end on a square handle (Fig. 10) and a long grooved staff ending in an open loop handle (Fig. 11).

The plate number "Pl. IX." is lettered at the top right outside the border, the section title "Chirurgie." is centered beneath the border, and the page number "70." 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 plate belongs to the Chirurgie section of the Recueil de planches, the volumes of engraved plates that accompanied the Encyclopédie edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It comes from the Livorno edition published by Giuseppe Aubert, whose plate volumes appeared between 1771 and 1778. The Chirurgie plates set out surgical instruments, bandages and apparatus and show operations, with the figures numbered and keyed to an explanation printed in the text volume.

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