SAMMELBAND OF FIVE PHARMACOLOGICAL TEXTS BY PIETRO CASTELLI
Arsenic, Vitriol and Hellebore

.

CASTELLI, Pietro.

Chalcanthium Dodecaporion sive Duodecim Dubitationes in usu olei Vitrioli et defensio Antiquorum in Arsenici... ad Raymundum Minderum.

Rome, Giacomo Mascardi, 1629.

4to (21 x 15 cm). [8], 79, [9] pp. Bound in contemporary vellum with title (“Petri Castelli Opera”) inked on spine in a gothic hand. Title page printed in red and black with woodcut arms of Cardinal Verallo; divisional title with engraved vignette bearing the arms of Pietro Castelli. Some mild toning; overall very good.
[BOUND WITH:] 2) Discurso della duratione de medicamenti tanto semplici, quanto composti... Rome, Giacomo Mascardi, 1621. [8], 68 pp.; title page with engraved vignette bearing arms of Pietro Castello. 3) Breve ricordo dell’ elettione qualita, et virtu dello spirito et oglio acido di vitriolo... Rome, Giacomo Mascardi, 1621. 30 pp., final blank. 4) Epistola...in qua agitur nomine hellebori simpliciter prolato... Rome, Giacomo Mascardi, 1622. 28 pp. 5) Epistola secunda de helleboro... Rome, Giacomo Mascardi, 1622. 48 pp.

Sammelband of five very rare first-edition pharmacological  works by the Italian physician and pharmacologist Pietro Castelli, including the very rare first edition of a polemical treatise advocating the controlled use of sulfuric acid (or “oil of vitriol”) and arsenic in lieu of liquid salts. In Part I of his 1619 Chalcanthinum, Castelli responds to the Bavarian court physician Raymund Minderer (1570-1621), who two years earlier had first advocated the therapeutic use of ammonia salts (ammonium acetate), which he had promptly christened “spiritus Mindereri.” The work’s second part, issued with a divisional title-page but with continuous pagination, cites Galen, Paracelsus and Cesalpino (under whom Castelli had studied) in defending the medicinal use of arsenic and sandaracs (for diarrhea).

The four separate works bound here are testament to Castelli’s vociferous defense of his chosen therapeutics, including black hellebore as a purgative. It is also worth noting that while the last two epistolary works are printed in Latin, indicating that they were part of an ongoing academic debate, the second and third titles appear in Italian. The third title (Breve ricordo) is of special note, in part because Castelli opens it by marshaling an army of no less than 67 doctors who have advocated the medicinal use of sulfuric acid. A number of German names are included—Caspar Hofmann (1572-1648), Philip Müller, even Minderer himself—as is that of Cesalpino, Castelli’s former teacher.

Pietro Castelli (1570-1657), physician, botanist, and student of Andrea Cesalpino, taught in Rome for forty years. He was also the director of the Orto Botanico in Rome. In 1634 he moved to Messina, where he took up the Chair of Medicine. He immediately set about establishing the University’s first botanical garden, the Orto Botanico Pietro Castelli, named after him and where he cultivated many exotic medicinal plants.  He was well-known for advocating so-called ‘heroic’ drugs—strong, sometimes poisonous remedies—whose use he defended thus in his 1634 Emetica: “A powerful illness requires a powerful medicine.”

OCLC indicates holdings for Chalcanthium Dodecaporion at the University of Chicago and the National Library of Medicine (NLM); work no. 2 at Yale Medical and the NLM; work no. 3 at Yale Medical, NLM, and the Chemical Heritage Foundation; and works nos. 4 and 5 at Yale Medical and the Huntington Library.

* STC Britain I p. 202; Poggendorff I.394; Wellcome 1342; Krivatsky 2242, 2234, 2244, 2245. Each title contains its own pagination and signatures; the last four are recorded separately in Krivatsky.

Price: $4,450.00