Highlights

T

hree parts in one volume, engraved portraits of Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey by J. van Meurs. The very rare first edition of Pierre Borel´s important work which contains the first full account of the invention of the telescope and the compound microscope. It also contains Christian Huygens' preliminary announcement (in anagram form) of his discovery of the rings of Saturn (and of the Saturnian moon, Titan) three years before it was announced in Systema saturnium (a book also found in the The Sjögren Library)

Borel, physician to the King of France, was first to describe the clinical signs of brain concussion. He was an active collector of rarities, plants, antiquities, and minerals, as well as manuscripts and books of the Hermetic philosophers or chemists. In this work he presents evidence to show that Zacharias Janssen and Hans Lipperhey, both spectacle-makers in Middelburg, Holland, were the inventors of the microscope and the telescope, in that order. Borel also gives a full account of the construction of telescopes and microscopes and discusses ways to grind lenses for both these instruments.  The book also details the history of the telescope from the earliest times up to Galileo, Descartes, and numerous others.
Borel was first to apply microscopy to medicine, and the second part of the book dated 1556 is devoted to microscopic observations.