Strasbourg : G. Silbermann, 1864.
Description : [ii] p., 1 [l.] fold. pl., 1-110 p., 1 [l.] pl. ; ill.: 1 phot., 2 chromolith. ; 25 cm.
Photograph : 1 mounted albumen of specimens.
Photographer : Victor Vigé.
Subject : Teeth and bone — Osteogenesis; pathology.
Notes :
Nous remercions aussi, bien cordialement, M. Victor Vigé , au talentet à l'amitié de qui nous devons la belle épreuve photographique représentant le foie ossifié d'un porc. — Page 156 of the abstract (vide supra).
Only the abstract of Joly's doctoral thesis—published the following year in the Toulouse Mémoires—has a reference to the photograph. The abstract was coauthored by his father, Nicolas Joly, a professor of physiology at Toulouse who was notorious for his attacks against Pasteur and germ theory. Most library catalogs do not mention the photograph which depicts a specimen of rare hepatic calcification in a pig. Probably, a select number of copies were issued with the photograph freely inserted between the pages—or a second printing of the thesis with the inserted photograph was paid for and circulated among friends and colleagues by a proud father desiring of their acclamation for his son's achievement. My copy of Joly's thesis is in a later binding with the photograph and a slip of letterpress both mounted onto contemporary card stock as issued (18.5 X 13.5 cm) and bound behind two thin passe-partouts.
The thesis is an ingenious search for what can be revealed about osteogenesis by introducing coloring agents such as madderwort into the diet of animals. Joly continued his research and published another paper on the physiological effects of coloring agents in diet for which he won a medical prize in 1866. Soon afterwards he settled into a career as a medical officer in the French infantry and directed his future studies to entomology.
