Farmer One by Christian Cantrell (1 results)

Paperback. Condition: Very good. First. PRESENTATION COPY TO A MILITARY HERO. Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1876. First edition. Octavo (9 3/8" x 6 1/8", 240mm x 155mm). [Full collation available.] With 12 lithographic plates, each with its tissue-guard, and many in-text illustrations. Bound in the publisher's printed blue-grey wrappers. Title-page to the front wrapper and advertisements to the rear On the spine, author, title and imprint. All edges of the text-block untrimmed. Recently conserved (front wrapper re-attached; full conservation report available). Chips to the edges of the wrappers. Spine sunned, with some cracks and holes. Foxed throughout. Paste-downs coming up, with some tears. Inscribed in ink by the author on the half-title: "Au Colonel Broye/ son compatriote et son ami/ L. Pasteur". Bookplate of Billie and Stanley Marcus to the verso of the front wrapper (under the paste-down). Presented in a custom half black morocco over green cloth slip-case with chemise. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a pioneer of microbiology, and the father of germ theory. He had a life-long interest in food science and safety, and the process of eliminating pathogens through high heat -- pasteurization -- is named after him. From the 1850's Pasteur investigated fermentation in particular, and published in 1866 his Études sur le vin, to which this is a companion-volume of sorts. His contributions to the understanding of spoilage -- the maladies of the title -- and various means of preventing or combatting it must surely have contributed many billions to the world economy, as well as preventing incalculable food waste. It is no overstatement that the modern global food and beverage industry could not exist without Pasteur and his work in this field. Pasteur inscribed the volume to "his compatriot and his friend" Antoine Marie Louis Broye (1823-1905). Broye achieved the rank of colonel on New Year's Eve of 1871, and that of brigadier-general 5 June 1877, indicating a presentation before that date. From 1873 he served as aide-de-camp to Maréchal MacMahon, who went on to be President of France. Despite the affectionate and patriotic dedication, no relation between the two men is recorded. Harold Stanley Marcus (1905-2002) was president and then chairman of Neiman-Marcus, which had been founded by his father. He married Billie Cantrell in 1932 and was widowed in 1978. Marcus was one of the great lights of XXc book-collecting, founding the Book Collector's Service Bureau (see David Farmer's Stanley Marcus: a life with books (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1995)). The volume then passed into the collection of Dr. Eugene Vigil, whose erstwhile Antiquariat Botanicum was one of the great sources of natural history books in the United States (whose books have been dispersed by Hindman over many years; acquired 9 November 2021 (lot 153). Garrison-Morton 2485; Heirs of Hippocrates 1898.