Suture Needles and Screw Instruments, Diderot Chirurgie Plate III, circa 1772

An original antique copper engraving, uncolored, with nineteen numbered instruments. At the top are curved scissors (Fig. 1), a slender double ended spatula (Fig. 2) and a large angled forceps with long jaws (Fig. 3). At the right are two screw instruments, one with a trefoil thumbpiece (Fig. 4), the other a long tube with a three pronged tip (Fig. 5). The middle row holds curved suture needles (Figs. 6 to 8), two straight needles (Figs. 9 and 10), a probe (Fig. 11) and a small hook (Fig. 12). Below are a looped instrument (Fig. 13), a heart shaped double leaf on a shaft (Fig. 14), a double blade on a pear shaped handle (Fig. 15), a sickle shaped blade (Fig. 16), a pointed instrument (Fig. 17), a long curved needle (Fig. 18) and a threaded rod in a split sheath (Fig. 19).

The plate number "Pl. III." is lettered at the top right outside the border, the section title "Chirurgie,", with a comma, is centered beneath the border, and the page number "64." 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.