PARACELSUS (1493-1541)

Libri V de vita longa , incognitarum rerum, & hucusque à nemine tractatarum referitissimi, una cum commendatoria Valentii de Retiis, et Adami à Bodenstein dedicatoria epistola ... Basileae, Apud Petrum Pernam

Basle: Peter Perna, [1566].
8vo: a--k8 (--k5,6,7 & 8, blanks), 76 of 80 leaves, pp. [54] 98. Roman letter. Woodcut initials. [Bound with:] *Libri quinque de causis, signis & curationibus morborum* ex tartaro utilissimi. Opera et industria nobilis viri Adami a Bodenstein in lucem propter commune commodum micorcosmi ... Basileae, Per Petrum Pernam. 1563. *Basle:* Peter Perna, 1563. 8vo: *8 a--v8 (--v7,8), 142 of 144 leaves, pp. [16] 265 [3] (last page blank). Roman letter. Woodcut initials. Leaf size and condition: 153 x 98. I: 4 leaves, a1.8 and b3.6 DEFECTIVE and restored WITH CONSIDERABLE LOSS OF TEXT; II: light waterstains and tiny wormholes in blank margins. Binding: Nineteenth-century vellum boards. Provenance and annotation: Walter Pagel (1896--1983), signature, undated; B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: I: Sudhoff 503; VD16 ZV12157; Wellcome 4741; II: Sudhoff 54; VD16 P711; Wellcome 4751.
I: Third edition: first as Libri quatuor de vita loga (1560); the present is a reprint of the second, enlarged edition (1562) with the errata corrected. Another edition was printed at Frankfurt in 1583. II: First edition.
§ The first work in the volume, on health and long life, describes the preparation of medicines, both chemical and herbal, and discusses Paracelsus' treatment of such diseases as gout, leprosy, epilepsy, cancer and syphilis. It is in the use of chemical therapy, given internally and in moderate doses (unlike the toxic doses of mercury then used in treating syphilis) that Paracelsus is considered to have made the greatest advances in clinical medicine. His chief contribution to medical theory was in demolishing the ancient theory of disease, seen as an imbalance of the humours, and replacing it with a parasitistic or ontological concept of disease that is essentially the modern one. (Pagel, DSB, 10:307). The second work concerns Paracelsus' concept of 'tartarous diseases' caused by deposits of salts of tartar in the joints and other parts of the body, rather than an imbalance of humours. He had first advanced this theory in De Morbis Tartereis (1531). This was the first suggestion of a chemical or metabolic cause for any disease. According to Paracelsus, the cause of this build up of the salts was the inability of certain individuals to metabolise the tartar. At the same time there might be external factors, such as the water supply and Paracelsus noted that in Switzerland there was no gout, no colic, no rheumatism and no stone. It is now known that the cause of gout is the accumulation of uric acid in the blood and the deposit of sodium biurate in the tissues: Paracelsus' suggestion of a chemical cause and of an 'inborn error of metabolism' (in Archibald Garrod's phrase) was extraodinary -- and had little influence till much later. (Copeman pp. 3 and 52--3). A note in Pagel's hand laid in reads: 'In this volume the discovery of sedimentation of protein by acid e.g. in urine is set out on p. 217 in the second work -- on Tartarus. W.P. See my Paracelsus p. 161'. Literature: Henry Maximilian Pachter, Paracelsus; Magic into Science (1951); W. S. C. Copemen, A Short History of the Gout, (1964).

• GBP 2,500.00 > autres monnaies
• Commande nro.: 19722

• libraire: Roger Gaskell (GREAT BRITAIN)