CELSUS, AULUS CORNELIUS. C.25 B.C.-C.50 A.D.


BARTHOLOMAEUS FONTIUS, Editor. 1445-1513. De medicina. Florence: Nicolaus Laurentii, 1478. Chancery folio and royal half-sheet 4to (264 x 188 mm). Collation: π6 a4 b-i6 l-z6 &6 aa-gg6 hh4 A8 (πlr blank, πlv letter by Fonzio to Francesco Sassetti, π2r text, hh4v colophon; A1r table, A8 blank). 196 leaves. 34 lines and headline. Types 2:iO6R (text), 3:92R (table). Initial spaces with printed guide letters, catchword at end of gathering π only. Modern gilt-paneled calf antique, gilt spine. Gathering A bound in at beginning. Some dampstaining to upper margins and throughout first and last gatherings, some light foxing, many leaves strengthened in inner margin, hhl with closed tear touching three lines of text, hh4 short at head and tail and reinforced on verso with some loss of text, printing flaw on c2r resulting from a crease in the paper.Provenance: extensive 15th-16th century marginalia in Latin and Greek (cropped); Haskell F. Norman (bookplate, his sale, Christie's New York, 18 March 1998, lot 56). FIRST EDITION of the oldest Western work on medicine after the Hippocratic writings. "Written about A.D. 30, it remains the greatest medical treatise from ancient Rome, and the first western history of medicine" (Garrison-Morton). "One of the first medical books to be set in type. Celsus's eight books on medicine originally formed part of a larger encyclopedic work (now lost) entitled Artes, compiled in the first century A.D. De Medicina deals with diseases treatable by diet and regimen, and with those amenable to drugs and surgery. In the first category are the earliest references to insanity and heart disease, while the surgical chapters contain the first accounts of the use of ligature, excellent descriptions of lateral lithotomy, and herniotomy, and the earliest discussion, in reference to the repair of mutilations, of what we now call plastic surgery" (Norman). "Celsus's treatise on medicine contains one of the first accounts of heart disease. It is now considered one of the greatest medical classics of antiquity" (Acierno p 9). In this copy, o5r has the correct reading "quintus" in the headline (see BMC). VERY RARE according to American Book Prices Current, the last copy sold at auction was this, the Norman copy, in 1998. BMC VI, 627 (lB. 27079, 27079a-b); BSB Ink. C-207; Dibner Heralds of Science 119; Flodr, Celsus 1; Garrison-Morton 20; Goff C-364; GW 6456; HC *4835; IGI 2674; Norman 424; Osler Incunabula medica 147; Proctor 6116.