Page 15 - Nov 2020 JOA

Scientific Pioneers, Including Louis Pasteur, Make Their Mark

on Heritage Auctions’ November 12 Manuscripts Event

DALLAS, TX – A note written in 1636 by the man who solved the riddle hailed as groundbreaking, life-saving, world-altering. The Oct. 2, 1636 letter
of human circulation and reproduction while serving as the personal from William Harvey, in Latin, was written during his service as Charles I’s
physician to King Charles I. A missive from 1880 by “the father of micro- physician and comes only eight years after he published Exercitatio
biology” to a colleague about cholera and “the hot virulence caused by the Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Study
flight of pigeons.” A letter from the doctor who pioneered modern of the Motion of the Heart and of the Blood in Animals), in which he
abdominal surgery. And a dispatch from the professor who, in 1839, gave “explained how the heart propelled the blood in a circular course
tuberculosis its name. through the body,” according to the BBC. Harvey’s discovery was hailed in
Heritage Auctions’ Manuscripts event, to be held online November 12, England, the news outlet wrote, “although it was greeted with some
is rife with circular letters, correspondence, documents, and ephemera skepticism on the Continent.”
signed by men and women about whom Louis Pasteur’s letter of Oct. 30, 1888,
libraries' worth of histories have been written. concerns cholera – for which he created the first
They range from Mary Queen of Scots to vaccine while battling the so-called germ theory
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln to denialists who wrongly insisted that bacteria
Bugsy Siegel, Steve Jobs to Nelson Mandela. were the result of disease and not the cause of it.
Princes and princesses, presidents and Supreme Pasteur's missive makes mention, too, of André
Court justices, generals and foot soldiers, Chantemesse, noted for his work in ending
authors and artists, inventors and dictators – typhoid fever. And there is a reference to
their private missives and public pronounce- Etienne-Jules Marey, a pioneer in the field of
ments available in this sale often helped shape cardiology (and cinematography!).
the modern world and our understanding of it. There is also a Pasteur-penned postcard
There are more than 600 lots in this event addressed to an unknown recipient on May 18,
inscribed by earth-shakers and the music- 1886. In this brief, moving communiqué
makers – among them, extraordinarily offerings Pasteur pleads for a young Russian boy who
from composers Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert, whose writings had been bitten by a rabid dog; he offers to pay for the boy’s medical
seldom come to market. In his missive, Beethoven requests the return of his expenses, as his parents were too poor to pay for his care.
“piano trio in B-flat,” and offers that it “will be returned within a few days Heritage Auctions is the largest fine art and collectibles auction house
together with the violin sonata in G.” Schubert’s letter, to a friend, declines founded in the United States and the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer.
a lunch invitation. Heritage maintains 11 offices around the world. The Internet’s most pop-
Offered here, from a single collection assembled by a collector in South ular auction-house website is HA.com, with searchable archives of five
Florida, are the writings of physicians, professors, surgeons, and naturalists million past auction records.
whose work was misunderstood or misinterpreted in its day but ultimately For breaking stories, follow us: HA.com/Facebook and HA.com/Twitter.

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