Rokitansky, Pathological Anatomy, four volumes, 1849 - 1854

A Manual of Pathological Anatomy. By Carl Rokitansky, M.D. Curator of the Imperial Pathological Museum, and Professor at the University of Vienna, Etc. In Four Volumes. London: Printed for The Sydenham Society. 
 
Vol I, 1854. Vol II, 1849. Vol III, 1850. Vol IV, 1852 
Green publisher’s cloth with gold crest on boards and gold text on spines. All bindings tight throughout. Hinges intact. 
 
Vol I partially uncut. Two tiny apparently-worm holes (?) perforating straight through book from front board through rear board. Mild foxing. Binding faded and likely of a different green hue than the others originally. Corners bumped. Tear at head of spine. xvi, 410 (2) 2 plates, 36. 
Vol II. Illegible ink signature dated 1849 on ffep. Mild foxing. Some old dry mildew spots on blank rear leaves. xvi, 359. 
Vol III. Corners bumped. Uncut. Particularly bright. xvi, 467. 
Vol IV. A bit rubbed. Tiny split near head of front joint. Uncut. Early ink signature (different from the one in Vol II) on title page. x, 398.  
 
Published out of sequence, all sets are “married” in a sense, though the slightly different hue of Vol I, and the different signatures in two of the volumes suggest this may be a truly married set. 
 
See Heirs 1658 for the first (German) edition: "Carl Von Rokitansky (1804 - 1878) rightly may be regarded as the finest anatomical pathologist of his age. It was largely through his influence that the Vienna School reblossomed into world prominence. Although he never practiced medicine, his studies and descriptions of structural changes in disease, based on over 30,000 autopsies performed while he was director of Vienna's Pathological Institute, had an enormous impact on clinical medicine. The number of original observations in his Handbuch is staggering. Included here are the first differentiation between lobar and lobular pneumonia, the first pathological account of spondylolisthesis, the first accurate description of acute yellow atrophy of the liver, and the correct classification of patent ductus arteriosis as a congenital lesion. Not without its shortcomings, the work includes Rokitansky's anachronistic humoral disease theory which was criticized by Virchow, then professor of anatomy in Berlin. Rokitansky admitted the error and rewrote the entire work. In spite of such theoretical miscalculations, Rokitansky revealed more clearly than any of his predecessors the natural history of disease and its structural manifestations."
 
See also G-M 2293 & 3618: "Rokitansky ranks with Morgagni as among the greatest of all writers on gross pathology....He foresaw the eventual importance of chemical pathology, at that time non-existent."