Du mouvement dans les fonctions de la vie. Insc. to P. Ricord.
Publisher Information: Paris: Germer Bailliere, 1868.
Marey, Étienne Jules (1830-1904). Du mouvement dans les fonctions de la vie: Leçons faites au Collège de France. vii, 479pp. Text illustrations. Paris: Germer Baillière, 1868. 213 x 133 mm. 19th-century quarter morocco, spine a bit rubbed, one corner bumped. Very good. Presentation Copy, inscribed by Marey to Ricord on the half-title: “A Mr. Ricord son élève bien affectionné E Marey.”
First Edition. Marey pioneered the use of graphical recording in the experimental sciences, using instruments (many of his own invention) to capture and display data impossible to observe with the senses alone, and to record the progression of such data over time. He began by applying graphical recording methods to problems in physiology, using machines to investigate the mechanics of the circulatory, respiratory and muscular systems. The present work, based on lectures given at the Collège de France, is one of Marey’s last on graphical methods applied to physiology; after 1868 he began studying human and animal locomotion, inventing photographic methods of recording movement that led to the development of cinematography.
Du mouvement contains discussions of Marey’s graphical methods both in general and as applied to muscle physiology. In the 1860s he developed an improved myograph that allowed him to analyze “the phases and speeds of voluntary striated muscle contractions and their variability according to species and conditions . . . In the process he demonstrated that muscular tremors produced sustained contraction, and his work led to research on muscle reflex in different pathological states such as epilepsy. These myographic studies were an important contribution to muscle thermodynamics” (Braun, Picturing Time: The Work of Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), p. 24).
Book Id: 50776Price: $2,000.00