232. FABRE D'OLIVET (Antoine). Notions sur le Sens de l'Ouïe - Lot 232

232. FABRE D'OLIVET (Antoine). Notions sur le Sens de l'Ouïe en général, et en particulier sur le développement de ce sens, opéré chez Rodolphe grivel et chez plusieurs autres enfans sourds-muets de naissance. Montpellier, Vve Picot, 1819. In-8 paperback, 154 p., in beige dust jacket, as issued and uncut (only the introduction pages have been cut). Second edition enlarged with necessary clarifications, notes and supporting documents. This rare work recounts the cures that Fabre d'Olivet is said to have performed on many deaf people who were born mute, using the knowledge gained from deciphering the Sepher. In the edifying preliminary explanations, a vast 42-page introduction, he recounts Napoleon's hatred of him, and consequently the impossibility of publishing his major work Langue Hébraïque Restituée before the emperor's fall. Curiously, the healing of these deaf children and the publication of his account are linked to the difficulty of publishing La Langue Hébraïque Restituée, as the author explains, at length, in the introductory pages. Fabre d'Olivet, an erudite polyglot and polygraphic author, was very interested in occult medicine at the time, but this short treatise also addresses questions of history, philosophy, occultism and musicology. One of the rarest of Fabre d'Olivet's works, according to Caillet, pointing to the original 1811 edition, of which Fabre d'Olivet himself destroyed a large number of copies, and, mentioning later, the interest of the details concerning Napoleon's noxious relationship with the author, which are set out in the second edition only. (Caillet, 3785).