BEGUIN, Jean; BLAES, Gerard, ed.

Tyrocinium chymicum, Commentario illustratum.

Amsterdam, Caspar Commelinus, 1669.

12mo (13 x 7.5 cm). (18) ff. including engraved title-page, 332 pp., (4) ff., with folding table. Bound in contemporary stiff vellum, somewhat soiled; minor waterstaining towards end. Armorial bookplate of Jacob Reinbold Spielmann (with arms consisting of two dice and a three-leaf clover). Generally very good.

Second augmented edition. Initially published for Beguin’s students, the Tyrocinium quickly turned into one of the 17^th century’s most famous and widely published books of chemistry: “the most popular text book of its time” (Ferguson). It is above all a work of practical pharmacology and includes the first mention of acetone, which Beguin calls “the burning spirit of Saturn”. The DSB notes that “[f]or Beguin, chemistry was the art of separating and recombining natural mixed bodies to produce agreeable and safe medicines ... Most of the work is concerned with chemical operations rather than with theory, and Beguin emphasized that the most effective therapy combined Galenic and Paracelsian remedies.”

Jean Beguin (ca. 1550-ca. 1620), a native of Lorraine, sold chemical preparations in Paris and opened a school there for instruction in chemistry, pharmacy, and metallurgy: “He had great reputation as a teacher and was among the first to give practical instruction” (Ferguson). The engraved frontispiece shows Beguin inside his laboratory surrounded by the tools and machines of his trade. A folding table lists chemical operations. This second edition was edited and augmented by the eminent Dutch anatomist and professor of medicine Gerard Blaes (1625-1682). It appeared the same year Blaes received permission to give bedside education from an Amsterdam city hospital, thereby founding Dutch academic medicine.

PROVENANCE: Jacob Reinbold Spielmann (1722-83), professor of chemistry at Strasbourg from 1749, and the chemical teacher of Goethe. Spielmann was one of the last French chemists of note who supported the phlogiston theory. He authored Pharmacopea generalis (J.G. Treuttel, 1783), a concise chemistry textbook which was based on his lectures.

OCLC records U.S. copies at Cornell, Chemical Heritage Foundation, National Library of Medicine, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.