Rare first and only edition of an extensive and well-illustrated pioneering work on ophthalmology and eye surgery, the first ever published in Portugal, with illustrations showing both the instruments and the surgeon and assistant removing a cataract from a patient's eye, half a century before surgeons began using ether as an anaesthetic. Santa Anna notes that parts are largely translated from Louis Florent Deshais-Gendron's Traité des maladies des yeux and Joseph Jacob Plenck's Doctrina de morbis oculorum, but he made additions and corrections based on his own experience.
In 1783, Joaquim José de Santa Anna (ca. 1735?-1814) was appointed as the first ocular surgeon in Portugal, at the Hospital de S. José in Lisbon.Santa Anna proved well-versed in the theories of the most distinguished ophthalmologists of Germany, England and France, as well as in the auxiliary sciences that formed an essential background.
With an owner's inscription struck through in the foot margin of the title-page. The left edge of plate I is slightly browned near the head, where it has been trimmed up to the border of the image, and one quire is slightly loose, but the book is generally in very good condition. The binding shows some superficial wear but is still good. A fascinating account of 18th-century eye care. Blake, p. 400; Innocêncio IV, 91 & XII, 95; Porbase (1 copy); Wellcome V, p. 21.