pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

12mo: ):( 12 2):( 6 A–D8 E6 , 72 leaves, pp. [36] 107 [1]. Engraved title on
):(1 verso, signed ‘F. Franck sc.’
36 engraved plates numbered 1–36 (bound at the end, gathered in 3
12­leaf sections).
135 x 78mm. A few early paper repairs (done before binding?); some
dustsoiling.
Binding: Contemporary vellum boards.
Provenance: nineteenth­century bookplate of the London Society for
Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews, 16 Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
First edition. A German edition, Kurzter EntwurV des Eigentlichen Natur-
Alphabets der Heiligen Sprache was issued by the same publisher in the
same year, and a Dutch version in 1679. Wellcome III p. 241; Krivatsy
5426; VD17 12:153272L.
A pioneer work in the theory of language in which van Helmont sought to
show how the deaf may be taught to speak; and to prove that Hebrew is a
‘holy language’ because the characters of the alphabet resemble the position
of the lips and tongue to form the sounds with which mankind was Wrst taught
to speak. Van Helmont’s method of teaching the deaf contains the basic
principles of all later teaching methods (Sherrer pp. 422–424).
Letters and conWgurations of the throat and tongue are shown on the
thirty­six engraved plates. using these images van Helmont claimed to have
successfully taught deaf­mutes to articulate the alphabet on Wrst sight.
Van Helmont’s theories of phonetics were discussed by such contemporaries
as Samuel Hartlib, John Worthington, Henry More, and Increase Mather.
His neglect by later generations in Britain, Sherrer asserts, must be due to
the fact that the book was never translated into English.
Francis Mercurius was the only surviving son of Jan Baptiste van Helmont
(1614–1698), the Paracelsian chemist. This was the younger van Helmont’s
Wrst book. ‘His characteristic blend of the speculative and entirely practical
was shown by his proposals arising from his theory for teaching those born
deaf to speak and to understand speech.’ (Stuart Brown in ODNB).
It appears that in this copy the misprint on the titlepage has been corrected
by handstamping the missing X; a variant has the date correctly printed (VD17
7:628249S) and the real date is conWrmed by the colophon.
Ferguson I p. 380; Grace B Sherrer, ‘Francis Mercury Van Helmont: A Neglected
Seventeenth­Century Contribution To The Science Of Language’, The Review of
English Studies, 14 (1938) 420–427.
90
HELMONT, Franciscus Mercurius van (1614–1699)
The paradoxal discourses of F. M. Van Helmont, concerning the
macrocosm and microcosm, or the greater and lesser world, and their
union set down in writing and now published by J. B.
London: printed by J. C[ottrell]. and Freeman Collins, for Robert
Kettlewel, at the Hand and Scepter near S. Dunstan’s Church in Fleetstreet,
1685.