Head of the collection of this technical periodical, which appeared for only three years (1839, 1840, and 1841); this set comprises all the issues published from January 1839 to December 1840.
Half lavallière calf bindings with corners, smooth spines lightened and decorated with gilt and blind fillets, red calf title labels, green volume labels, some rubbing to the spines, marbled paper boards, marbled edges, contemporary bindings.
Some occasional foxing.
The first volume is illustrated with in-text figures and 3 plates out of text; the second contains in-text figures.
The articles abound in practical details on the state of science and technology during the July Monarchy.
All manner of precise papers address an extraordinary variety of topics: beer (domestic and economical), autopsies, glanders in horses, rabid dogs, details on the daguerreotype and Daguerre’s process (vol. I, pp. 434–439 and 529–537, and vol. II, three articles), potatoes (starch, use, bread-making, price, vol. I), lithography, mummification, vine-growing (in Russia, vol. I), methods for bleaching and cleaning engravings and removing stains from books (vol. I, pp. 276–278), vaccination (vol. I, pp. 567–574), steam baths (Duval’s apparatus, vol. II), steamships, the budget of the city of Paris for the year 1840 (vol. II, pp. 278–282), coffee, the opium trade in India and China (vol. II, pp. 102–106), paper, etc.
The editor, Jean-Baptiste-Alphonse Chevallier (1793–1879), taught at the Paris School of Pharmacy and played a key role in two fields: urban public hygiene (disinfection of sewers, sanitation of the Canal Saint-Martin, etc.) and industrial toxicology related to occupational diseases.