PORZIO, Simone (1496-1554)

Five works bound together I. De humana mente disputatio, 1551. 4to: A--L4 M6 (blank M6), 50 leaves, pp. 98 [2]. 2. De Dolore, 1551. 4to: a--g4 h6 (blank h6), 34 leaves, pp. 66 [2]. 3. De coloribus oculorum, 1550. 4to: a--g4 h2 (--h2, blank), 29 of 30 leaves, pp. 57 [1]. 4. An homo bonus vel malus volens fiat, 1551. 4to: a--f4 g6, 30 leaves, 34 leaves, pp. 67 [1]. 5. De puella germanica, quae fere biennium vixerat sine cibo, potuque, 1551. 4to A--B4, 8 leaves, pp. 16. [All with imprint:] Florentiae Apud Laurentium Torrentinum [except 4, which has no publisher's name]

Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1550--1551.
4to: collations as above. All in Roman letter with Italic headings and preliminaries. Woodcut initials. Leaf size and condition: 214 x 138mm. Washed, some residual light staining and foxing, good large copies. Binding: Nineteenth-century quarter morocco. Provenance and annotation: Walter Pagel (1896--1983); B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: EDIT16 CNCE 34588, 34587, 34577, 34585 and 34589; Adams P1962, 1961, 1959, 1957 and cf. P1963, another edition, [1554?]. Bird 1989 (no. 3) and 1990 (no. 5); Durling 3745, 3744, 3742, 3741 and 3746; Wellcome, 5221 (no. 2), and 5218 (no. 3) and 5222 (no. 5).
First editions.
§ A good collection of Porzio's works, probably bound together since publication. Little has been written on Porzio and in the literature on the history of medicine only his opthalmological works are given any attention. These are De coloribus ... commentariis illustratus which Torrentini published in 1548 and the De coloribus oculorum in the present collection, described as 'One of the earliest monographs on ophthalmology in which the author attempts to explain the cause of the varieties of colors of eyes (Albert, Norton and Huertes 1838). There is an article on Porzio in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which I quote in full: 'SIMONE PORZIO (1497--1554), Italian philosopher, was born and died at Naples. Like his greater contemporary, Pomponazzi, he was a lecturer on medicine at Pisa (1546--1552), and in later life gave up purely scientific study for speculation on the nature of man. His philosophic theory was identical with that of Pomponazzi, whose De immortalitate animi he defended and amplified in a treatise De mente humana. There is told of him a story which illustrates the temper of the early humanistic revival in Italy. When he was beginning his first lecture at Pisa he opened the meteorological treatises of Aristotle. The audience, composed of students and townspeople, interrupted him with the cry Quid de anima? (We would hear about the soul), and Porzio was constrained to change the subject of his lecture. He professed the most open materialism, denied immortality in all forms and taught that the soul of man is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants, material in origin and incapable of separate existence.' Literature: Encyclopaedia Britannica (11th edition, 1911, 22, p. 169).

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• Bestellnummer: 19746

• Antiquariat: Roger Gaskell (GREAT BRITAIN)