Beschreibung:

FREUD, Sigmund. (1856-1939). [Cover title:] ber Spinalganglien und Rckenmark des Petromyzon . Offprint from: Sitzb. der k. Akad. de. Wissenschaften , 3 Abth., 78 (1878). [Vienna: K.k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1878]. 8 o (247 x 156 mm). 44 leaves, [1] 2-87 [1] pp. 4 folding lithographed plates at end by F. Schima after Freud. Original printed brown wrappers, uncut (ends of spine a bit chipped, three tears in rear cover). FIRST SEPARATE EDITION of Freud's very rare third paper published as a medical student (at the age of 22). PRESENTATION COPY, inscribed by Freud at top of front cover: "Seinem lieben Freunde/Herrn Chem. Dr. J. Herzig/d. Verf." Josef Herzig (1853-1924), professor of chemistry at the University of Vienna, was one of Freud's lifelong friends. This paper "continued Freud's research on the large Reissner cells in the spinal cord of the fish Petromyzon , which he determined to be 'nothing else than spinal ganglion cells which, in these low vertebrates...remain within the spinal cord.'...Freud made a major contribution to evolutionary biology by showing that the spinal ganglion cells of Petromyzon , which 'exhibit every transition between the bipolarity and unipolarity'... represent a transition between the bipolar cells of lower and the unipolar cells of higher vertebrates. Freud must have been pleased with this piece of research as he referred to it many years later in his Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis " (Norman). "Some of Freud's earliest published papers, written between 1877 and 1883, detail findings that are far from trivial. They substantiate evolutionary processes revealed in the nervous structures of the fish he was examining under his microscope. What is more, it becomes clear in retrospect that these papers form the first link in the chain of ideas leading to the draft of a scientific psychology he would attempt in 1895 " (Peter Gay, Freud , p. 36, italics ours). Grinstein 34; Jones I, pp. 52-53; Standard edition 1878a; Stanford 3; Norman F3.