Steno, Nicolaus; Elementorum Myologiae Specimen, seu musculi descriptio geometrica. Cui accedunt canis carchariae dissectum caput, et dissectus piscis ex canum genere. 1st edition, Ex Typographia sub signo Stellae, 1667.  Quarto, large paper copy, pp. (viii), 123, and 7 plates (3 woodcut and folding, 4 engraved), other woodcut illustrations in the text.

The work is complete and in an early 19th century half calf over marbled boards with gilt spine titles. The binding is tight with light scuffing to the boards, owners book plate on paste down, the text and plates are crisp with wide margins and with only very minor foxing to margins. A very rare work, in very good condition.
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A Danish anatomist and geologist Steno (1638-1686) was the son of a goldsmith.  He was educated in Copenhagen before beginning his travels and further studies abroad in 1660. While studying anatomy in Amsterdam he discovered the parotid salivary duct, also called Stensen’s duct after the Danish form of his name.
Steno obtained his medical degree from Leiden in 1664 and published his first major work which was De Musculis et Glandulis that same year. The following year he went to Florence, where he became physician to the grand duke Ferdinand II. It was while he was in Florence thathe made important contributions in the field of geology to the study of crystals and fossils. His observations on quartz crystals showed that, though the crystals differ greatly in physical appearance, they all have the same angles between corresponding faces. This led to the formulation of “Steno’s Law” which states that the angles between two corresponding faces on the crystals of any chemical or mineral species are constant and characteristic of the species. It is now known that this is a consequence of the internal regular ordered arrangement of the atoms or molecules.
Steno was particularly concerned with Mediterranean fossils known at the time as ‘glossipetrae’ (tongue stones), thought by some to have fallen from the sky and by others to have grown in the earth like plants. They were triangular, flat, hard, and with crenellations along two sides. 
In 1666 Steno was presented with the head of a giant shark. He was immediately struck by the close similarity between the glossipetrae and sharks' teeth. In attempting to understand this correlation Steno formulated two important principles to explain how solids form in solids. By the first, an ordering rule, it proved possible to tell which solidified first by noting which solid was impressed on the other. As glossipetrae left their imprint in the surrounding rocks they must have been formed first. Therefore it made no sense to suppose that they grew in the strata.
Steno's second rule proclaimed that if two solids were similar in all observed respects then they were likely to have been produced in the same way. It followed that the similarity between the glossipetrae and sharks' teeth revealed them as fossilized teeth, a revolutionary claim at the time. Steno offered more than an explanation of glossipetrae; he proposed a way of interpreting the fossil record, one which would be followed increasingly by later geologists.
The controversy resulting from the publication of his De Musculis et Glandulis in 1664 led Steno to publish his famous work Elementorum. In the first part he laid the foundation of muscular mechanics as we know it. Here Steno was the first to provide both clear concepts terminology of the parts of the muscle.
 The second part of his major work is on geology. in it Steno outlined the basic principles on which modern geology is founded. It is here that he describes the head of the gigantic shark he received in October 1666, He made detailed observations of its skin, its canals, the brain and nerves, the Lorenzinian ampullae, and the eyes. The rows of pointed teeth in the mouth (illustrated in two plates) led him to a thorough study of their number and substance. He discusses the question whether the “glossopetrae” or sharks’ teeth found in rocks belonged to such fish, or were mere mineral concretions. He concludes that they were fossil sharks’ teeth. An entire series of conclusions about rock origin and structure resulted from this recognition. These conclusions are given in the 22-page “digression”, as Stenso calls it, in the present book. The last three are: that the soil in question was once under water; secondly, that the soil in question is a sediment gradually accumulated from water, and thirdly that the parts that resemble parts of animals are in fact parts of animals. Thus originated the sedimentary theory of geology, Steno used the words “strata” and “sedimenta” in this book. He went on to further expound his theory in his De Solido intra Solidum Naturaliter contento Dissertationis Prodromus of 1669. But it was in his treatise Elementorum that he first expressed his views thus making this the earliest geological treatise. The 2nd edition of Elementorum was published in 1669 and is also offered on this site.