SCHRÖCK, Lucas (1646-1730)

Lucas Schröck was born in Augsburg, the son of a physician. After medical studies in Jena he travelled in Germany and Italy. Back home in Jena in 1667 he graduated with the dissertation De moscho, on the musk deer, Moschus moschiferus, which was later expanded into an elaborate scholastic treatise published in 1682 and dedicated to Archbishop Anselm Francisco. The book is divided into forty-seven chapters, in each of which musk is considered from many different points of view. – “The paper contains very little anatomy even of the musk glands, the secretion of which is the subject of the work. He examined microscopically, however, the structure of the hairs in various parts of the body, and mentions making sections of them with a small very sharp knife, in which achievement he was anticipated by Leeuwenhoek” (Cole) . The fine plates are showing the musk deer and its musk glands. One plate with engraved Chinese characters.. The frontispiece is showing an oriental scene with a Chinese, an American Indian, and a woman with a book leading a musk deer. Schröck was a member of the illustrious Academia Naturae Curiosorum under the name of Celsus, and in 1685 the editor of their Ephemeriden and contributed himself with a great number of articles.

Collation: Pp (12), 224, (6). Engraved frontispiece by J. Z. Raidel, and 3 folding plates engraved by Melchior Haffner.

Binding: Contemporay sprinkled boards.

References: Waring, E. J. Bibliotheca Therapeutica, vol. 2 (1879) p 571; Cole, F. J. A History of Comparative Anatomy (1949), p 359.