A fine and fresh copy of the editio princeps of the Hippocratic corpus, a collection of texts assembled in the third century B.C., including the Hippocratic Oath and many of the foundation texts of western medicine, traditionally attributed to the legendary physician and teacher Hippocrates of Cos. “It is uncertain..... More

Rare first edition of this influential balneological treatise by one of the founding fathers of hydrotherapy. A modern interpretation of Galen, Avicenna and Hippocrates, Brancaleoni's work promoted the healthful and hygienic effects of bathing a generation earlier than Falloppio, and well in advance of the 19th-century pan-European trend for spa... 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

A handsome sammelband of the two most important anatomical works of the French Renaissance, both in their first French editions. Charles Estienne’s superbly-illustrated Dissection des Parties du Corps Humain is bound here after Jacques Grévin’s adaptation of Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica, being the first appearance of Vesalius in the..... More

First edition, and an important annotated copy, of the foundational text of scientific botany and the first articulation of the modern concept of species. Andrea Cesalpino’s (1519-1603) comparative plant taxonomy – “the first rational system of plant classification” (PMM) – far surpassed any rival system of his day. De plantis..... 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 of one of the great rarities of anatomical literature: Fabrizio’s..... More

Rare second edition of “decidedly the best of the Renaissance books on opthalmology” (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

Very rare first and sole edition of this professional guide to assaying gold, silver and assorted precious metals by a practicing Madrid assayer, of interest for the international as well as mercantile history of Spain in the last years of her imperial period. The work treats the physical properties... More

Very rare first edition, first issue (without the errata printed on verso of F8) of "one of the greatest of medical classiscs" describing a new method of physical diagnosis--thoracic percussion, namely, tapping a patient's chest and determining from the resultant sound whether it was healthy or diseased. The method was... 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

Extremely rare offprint of this study of hermaphroditism in a higher animal (a goat) – viewed very much as an abomination of nature. The work is illustrated with a large lithographed plate depicting both the external and internal anatomy of the hermaphrodite. Citing earlier work on hermaphroditism in Aldrovandi, Bauhin... More