GUILLEMEAU, Jacques (1550-1613)

Lot 166
10.12.2025 12:00UTC +00:00
Classic
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Lieu de l'événementRoyaume-Uni, London
Commissionsee on Website%
ID 1514365
Lot 166 | GUILLEMEAU, Jacques (1550-1613)
Valeur estimée
£ 6 000 – 8 000
GUILLEMEAU, Jacques (1550-1613)
A worthy treatise of the eyes. Translated by Anthony Hunton (d.1624). [London]: Robert Waldegrave for Thomas Man and William Broom, [c.1587].
The only known example of the first edition, first issue of an early English work on ophthalmology. Guillemeau’s Traité des maladies de l'oeil (Paris: 1585), ‘decidedly the best of the Renaissance books on ophthalmology’ (Garrison), is here translated into English for the first time by Anthony Hunton, a Lincolnshire-born ‘student of Physicke’ who studied at Cambridge and would later take on the dual role of preacher-physician at Newark-on-Trent. Printed alongside A worthy treatise are Hunton’s translations from Johann Weyer’s Medicarum observationum rararum (Basel: 1567) and Benoist Textor’s De la nature et cure du chancre (Lyon: 1550), dealing with scurvy and cancer respectively.

‘The translator obtained Guillemeau’s work from his teacher, the famous English anatomist and surgeon John Banister. The translation systematically imported many European concepts, and provided the standard categorization of eye diseases for the next century […] The translation offered Greek and Latin terminology along with colloquial English expressions, and therefore introduced numerous ophthalmic terms into the English language, e.g.: amblyopia, couching, strabismus, myopia, and proptosis’ (Leffler et al). 'After some copies had been printed, somebody connected with the publication, probably Waldegrave, had the idea of introducing into the volume, as a supplement to Guillemeau's treatise, Walter Bailey’s Brief treatise concerning the preservation of the Eyesight. This had been published by the same printer in 1586 and no doubt he thought it a satisfactory way of re-issuing such a slight work. Consequently, in the second issue, Bailey's work appears after Guillemeau's and before Weyer's and a new title-leaf was printed to inform the public of this fact […] Errors in the earlier title are corrected, the translator's name is replaced by his initials, and the announcement of the inclusion of Bailey's treatise appears in the place of the printer's ornament’ (Poynter). ESTC S92783; Leffler, Christopher T. et al. ‘Enduring Influence of Elizabethan Ophthalmic Texts of the 1580s: Bailey, Grassus, and Guillemeau’. The Open Ophthalmology Journal (2014); Poynter, F.N.L. ‘Notes on a late-sixteenth-century ophthalmic work in English’, The Library, ser. 5, 2 (1947).

12mo (122 x 71mm). Woodcut printer’s device, head- and tailpieces, initials (minor fraying at corner of title, upper blank corner of D4 with minor burn loss, some dampstaining). Contemporary blind-ruled English limp vellum, central blind-stamped floral device on covers, lettered in manuscript on spine (lacking ties, darkened and somewhat stained, text block loose in binding and partially split but holding, rear endpaper detached). Provenance: translator’s name on title struck through in ink – early annotation in ink on L11v – Royal Society of Medicine (ink stamp on title [Ophthalmological Library] on rear endpaper, evidence of shelf-labels on upper cover and spine).
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