La Poudre de Sympathie, deffendue contre les obiections de Mr Cattier, medecin du Roy.
8vo (10 x 14.5 cm), 56 pp., [4] ff., including woodcut colophon on title. Bound in 19th-century crushed morocco with coat of arms of P. De la Morandière, in center and spine gilt with title, with also his ex-libris pasted on the endpaper of the front cover. Figurative endleaves. Minor soiling to titles, lower margin of scattered leaves cropped, affecting signature-mark and publishing date on title page but not printed text. Toning and minor spotting throughout, otherwise good. [BOUND WITH:] CATTIER, Isaac. Response a Monsieur Papin Docteur en Medecine, touchant la Poudre de Sympathie. Paris, Edme Martin, 1651. 8vo, 87 pp., [1] f., including woodcut colophon on title and final pages, concluded with a page of errata. Contemporary manuscript annotations under epigram and in the margins of a dozen pages, often cropped but legible. Scarce first editions of two separately issued works on the efficacy of sympathetic powder, a form of sympathetic magic, with Cattier’s written in response to Papin. Sympathetic powder, generally copper sulfate mixed with gum Arabic, was believed in the seventeenth century to cure many kinds of injuries from a great distance. With their respective essays on sympathetic powder, Nicolas Papin and Isaac Cattier take opposing sides in the larger debate roiling the French medical establishment. Papin, the powder’s advocate, is ironically the more scientific of the two. Extensively discussing the work of Ambroise Paré and Wilhelm Fabry, he argues that in the same way that light, colors, and odors can be conveyed over great distances, the healing effects of the powder are conveyed through the “atoms” of a medium by a “universal spirit.” Cattier’s approach is more philosophical. Citing such ancients as Plato, Pliny, and Galen, he methodically demonstrates the perils of believing in things without evidence. Because he is unable to see the effects of the powder, he dismisses it, attributing the public’s love of it as little more than infatuation with novelty. The powder had been in use as early as the 1620s, when Kenelm Digby, the English physician and polymath, popularized the treatment in France. The treatment, though presented to the public as scientific, more closely resembles European traditions of magic than medicine: instead of applying the powder directly to the wound, it was applied to the instrument that delivered it. Thus, if one were stabbed by a sword, one would be best cured by placing the powder of sympathy on the offending blade. Like other magical forces, the bond between patient and blade could also be used for ill: if the powdered blade were heated up in a forge, the wound would hurt anew. Even among those who accepted this technique, however, there was real debate about just how near the patient had to be for the powder to work: 200 miles? 500 miles? The powder’s supposed strength peaked in 1687, when a pamphlet was published in London arguing that the powder could solve the longitude problem. A sea captain, it was claimed, could take an injured dog to sea, while back in London, the powder could be used to hurt the dog at prescribed times. The dog would instantly yelp, telling the captain what time it was back in England and thereby letting him triangulate his position. The two works continue a dispute begun in 1644, when Papin published a Latin dissertation on the benefits of sympathetic powder, to which Cattier responded critically in 1650. In this volume, Papin responds to those criticisms, and is in turn criticized by Cattier once more. Nicolas Papin (died 1653) was a doctor in Blois who wrote on Descartes, the powder of sympathy, and the tides. Isaac Cattier (died 1657) was a royal physician and a Professor of Anatomy at the University of Montpelier who published several books on medicine. Although Papin’s work is well represented in American libraries, Cattier’s response is considerably rarer: OCLC lists Yale, Kansas, Chemical Heritage Foundation and Columbia.
* Krivatsy 8555 (Papin) and 2312 (Cattier).
Price: $1,950.00