Rare, second Italian-language edition (first 1522) of the Herbarius latinus, important for the dissemination of botanical/medical knowledge in popular culture and particularly for the adoption of this originally German-printed Latin work for readers in the Veneto. The second section, with 96 chapters, includes information on laxatives, aromatics, fruits, seeds, gums..... More

Very rare first edition (1565) – virtually unacquirable for the past half century or more – of the first printed work devoted to the botanical and medicinal discoveries made in the Americas, a treatise which, through its later expansions and numerous translations, would remain “for many years the most important..... More

Rare first edition of the naturalist Charles de l’Ecluse’s (Carolus Clusius; 1526-1609) botany of Sir Francis Drake’s 1577-80 circumnavigation (the first by an Englishman), the first printed book in botanical literature to be substantially based on a specific trans-Atlantic voyage of any kind, and indeed the first substantial record of..... More

Rare first edition of one of the earliest works on the subject of scurvy by the well-known anatomist, undertaken to survey the incidence of the disease in the ducal territories around Wittenberg, and consequently qualifying as an example of public health medicine. According to O’Malley, its positive result was the..... More

First editions of these four tracts (the second, De locutione, is the first folio edition; see below), including Girolamo Fabrizio’s (c. 1533-1619) two most important works, the De venarum ostiolis, and the De formato foetu. The De venarum ostiolis is one of the great rarities of anatomical literature: Fabrizio’s discovery..... More

Rare second edition of “decidedly the best of the Renaissance books on ophthalmology” (Garrison). “Guillemeau was a pupil of Ambroise Paré; his book was an epitome of the existing knowledge on the subject, chiefly from Greek and Arabian sources” (Garrison & Morton). Guillemeau was a leading authority on ophthalmology, obstetrics..... More

Extremely rare group of anatomical pamphlets in first Latin edition by Lodewijk de Bils, a nobleman from Flanders, who advertised a method of turning bodies into transparent teaching tools preserved and embalmed in a wax-like substance. The sammelband includes his treatises on the gall-bladder (Epistolica Dissertatio) and on the dissection..... More

An attractive example of the rare first edition of one of the earliest and most influential anatomical treatises published expressly for the use of artists, with text by the famed theorist, art historian and connoisseur Roger de Piles (1635-1709) and fine, full-page plates engraved after Vesalius by François Tortebat (c..... More

Rare 1720 Spanish-language relacion of an eyewitness account by the Bishop of Marseille, Henri François Xavier de Belsunce de Castelmoron (1671-1766), concerning the Great Plague then sweeping Marseille. Belsunce de Castelmoron, who would become famous for his extreme bravery in staying in the city to attend to the sick and..... More

First edition and fine copy of this work on plant classification which eclipsed all previous taxonomies, and whose general arrangement of families remains current today. Jussieu’s taxonomy was based on the species contained in the Jardin du Roi, supplemented by material provided by some of the great 18th-century Pacific discovery..... More

An attractive early 19th-century manuscript of anatomical drawings of the human (male) body, many with muscles keyed and labeled in a minute German script. The notebook is attributed by a German pencil annotation inside its upper cover to the Austrian painter Adam Brenner (1800-1891), who studied principally with Leopold Kupelwieser..... More