Extrait d'une lettre écrite à M. Régis, l'un des quatre commis pour le Journal des Scavans. Sur la structure des cheveux.

12mo: 123-[9] pp. (some browning and spotting, holes in blank flyleaf, tiny hole in title touching one letter).

Contemp. limp vellum (erratic sides), flat spine.

In this rare, curious booklet, illustrated with one fold. engr. pl., Chirac compares the root of hair with that of bulbous plants. He specifies how hair gets its nutrition and how it grows. Furthermore about the uncommon medical condition referred to as Polish plait "in which the hair shaft becomes entangled irreversibly, forming a mass which is matted and sometimes can be sticky and moist" (Wikipedia). In the 17th c. "plica polonica" was seen as an external symptom of an internal illness. A growing plait had to take the illness "out" of the body. Diderot classified the "illness" under the section of pathologies, a subgroup of medicine in a humble attempt to raise a boundary between the known and the unknowable, between the faith in the supernatural and the obvious. P. Chirac (1657-1732), French doctor and superintendent of the Royal Garden of Medicinal Plants, was appointed as Louis XV's first physician.
Ref. BnF. - Worldcat. - Not in Krivatsy, Wellcome.
Prov. Old ownership entries. - Extended ms. notes on verso title.