Opera de medicamentorum purgantium delectu, castigatione, & in usu, libri duo

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Auction dateClassic
19.10.2023 10:00UTC -04:00
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ID 1032744
Lot 92 | Opera de medicamentorum purgantium delectu, castigatione, & in usu, libri duo
Johannes MESUE (ps.? MASAWAIH-al-MARDINI, fl. 10th century?). Opera de medicamentorum purgantium delectu, castigatione, & in usu, libri duo. Edited by Giovanni Costeo and Vincenzo Cogollo. Venice: Giunta, 1589.

Second illustrated edition of “Mesue’s” famous group of treatises on pharmacology, combining ancient knowledge with contemporary Islamic medical innovations in medicinal botany and distillation. A large number of medical texts are attributed to an Arab author known in Western Europe as "Mesue the Younger," although it may be that many or all of them are actually products of the Latin West—influenced by Arabic science but created by Latin writers. This possibly pseudonymous figure is often confused with "Mesue the Elder," i.e. Yuhanna ibn Masawaih, a Nestorian physician who practiced in Abbasid Baghdad. A group of German scholars has dated the texts to the 13th century, and suggests perhaps an origin with the school of scholastic medicine at Bologna.

Whatever its origins, this body of work was a major conduit of Arabic knowledge into the Latin-speaking world and formed the basis for pharmaceutical education in the early modern period, inviting commentaries from the most learned physicians. This is the second Giunta edition, textually identical to their 1581 edition but with reduced type spacing. The majority of the woodcuts are reversed and simplified copies of the intermediate-sized woodblocks used to illustrate Mattioli's famous commentary on Dioscorides. Adams Y-11; Durling 3132. See Paula De Vos, "The Prince of Medicine: Yuhanna ibn Masawayh and the foundations of the Western pharmaceutical tradition," in Isis 104 (2013), pp. 667-712.

Two parts in one, folio (324 x 217mm). First title printed in red and black. Giunta device on title pages and colophon leaf, woodcut illustrations in first part, initials and ornaments (a few mostly pale stains). 18th-century Northern European calf, spine gilt in compartments, decorated blue patterned edges.
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