BRUNSCHWIG, Hieronymus, (c.1450-c.1512)

Los 128
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
VeranstaltungsortVereinigtes Königreich, London
Aufgeldsee on Website%
ID 1514507
Los 128 | BRUNSCHWIG, Hieronymus, (c.1450-c.1512)
Schätzwert
£ 20 000 – 30 000
BRUNSCHWIG, Hieronymus, (c.1450-c.1512)
Liber de arte distillandi de simplicibus. Strassburg: Johann (Reinhard) Grüninger, 8 May 1500.
Rare first edition of the first printed book devoted entirely to the subject of distillation: a landmark in the history of early modern medicine, pharmacy, and chemistry. According to RareBookHub only 2 copies are recorded as sold at auction in the past 50 years. Brunschwig was a surgeon and apothecary from Strasbourg, and in this book he describes one of the earliest systematic treatments of the extraction of medicinal essences from plants and other natural materials by distillation. This work is notable not only for its scientific content but also for its rich series of woodcut illustrations, depicting numerous plants and some animals, along with alembics, furnaces, and other distillation apparatus which are among the earliest visual records of chemical instruments and procedures in Western printing.

Brunschwig’s Liber bridges medieval alchemical traditions and the emerging empirical science of the Renaissance, combining practical instructions with observations drawn from his medical practice. It remained a foundational text for apothecaries and physicians well into the sixteenth century and was later followed by his expanded Liber de arte distillandi de compositis (1512). Goff B1227; HC 4021; Klebs 227.1; ISTC ib01227000; Schreiber 3644; Nissen, Bot. 262

Chancery folio (310 x 210mm). 229 (of 230) leaves (lacking K2; 4 uncoloured leaves supplied from another copy (A1 (title), and 3 leaves cropped to text: D2, D3 and Z2)). Gothic letter, double columns, 47 lines and head-line, rubricated, 4 full-page woodcuts (including on title), one double-page, many woodcuts in text of plants, animals and distilling apparatus, all coloured by a contemporary hand (except the supplied leaves noted above), occasional early annotations in ink (title repaired and re-margined, A2 torn with some loss of text and image and with old paper repair, loss to some corners (not affecting text), staining and soiling, long repaired tear to K3 with paper repair to lower margin, K6 detached and with repairs to fore-edge). Contemporary German blindstamped pigskin-backed wooden boards, the wooden boards covered in later wood-effect paper, two mis-matched clasps and catches, later calf labels to spine (later endpapers, binding rather rubbed). Provenance: Albert J. Chalmers (1870-1920, British colonial physician who was a research pioneer in tropical medicine; armorial bookplate, presented by Mrs. A. J. Chalmers in 1920 to:) – Royal Society of Medicine in 1920 (engraved gift bookplate, ink stamps to verso of preliminary blank and title).
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