SEVERINUS, Petrus (1542-1602)

Idea medicina philosophicae , fundamenta continens totius doctrinae Paracelsicae, Hippocraticae, & Galenicae ... Basileae, ex officina sixti Henricpetri. Anno M.D. LXXI. [Same text in colophon]

Basle: Sixtus Henricpetri, 1571.
4to: [alpha]--[beta]4 A--Z4 Aa--Zz4 AA--HH4 (blank [beta]4), 224 leaves, pp. [16] 416 [16]. Roman letter. Woodcut initials, printer's device on colophon leaf HH4. Leaf size and condition: 199 x 145mm. Some light soiling and discolouration; light waterstains in the margins of a few leaves. Binding: Early seventeenth-century English sprinkled calf, sometime rebacked; new endleaves. Spine and corners rubbed. Provenance and annotation: Signature (twice) on title of Joshua Smarfett, physician of Tenterden, Diocesan Licentiate 1606 (Mortimer p. 171); early underlining on one page; Sion College Library stamp and withdrawn stamp dated 1938. Walter Pagel (1896--1983), signature dated 1948; B. E. J. Pagel (1930--2007). References: VD16 S 6884; Adams 1019; Bird 2199; Durling 4231; Manchester 2312; Wellcome 5954. Nielsen 1554; Bruni Celli 3917.
First edition. Second edition, Erfurt, 1616, third, with commentary by William Davison, The Hague, 1660.
§ The 'first major synthesis of the Paracelsian corpus, the Idea medicinae philosophicae was highly influential'. It was 'immediately accepted as one of the most authoritative documents of the Paracelsian school' (Debus, DSB, p. 335). '... the best of Paracelsian commentators' (Pagel, Religion, VI, p. 165). 'The Idea opens by complaining that Galenic medicine had failed to suppress the new diseases that were ravaging Europe. If physicians would discard the works of the ancients and turn to their own observations of nature, they would find that a proper understanding of the relation of man and nature is expressed clearly in the analogy of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Severinus accepted the doctrine of signatures and, as a follower of Paracelsus, rejected the traditional doctrine of the humors and the belief that contraries cure.' (Debus, French Paracelsians, p. 18). This book also contains Severinus' views on epigenisis, the development of the organism from germ material (as opposed to preformation). 'As Pagel has shown, Severinus was the most eloquent exponent of epigenesis in the period between Aristotle and Harvey' (Debus, DSB, p. 335b). Walter Pagel made this book very much his own, writing about the relationship of Severinus' work to the Paracelsian corpus and as a precursor of Harvey (see references below). In his work on Harvey, Pagel wrote: 'Severinus' Idea was praised by Sir Francis Bacon as the eloquent presentation and philosophically harmonious system of Paracelsus of whom he thought little otherwise' (p. 240) and concludes 'His book was well known at Harvey's time, when it went through three editions. Bacon should have been well acquainted with it, as he had accorded to it words of praise. It is reasonable to assume that it was not unknown to Harvey, however little its affiliation to Paracelsian ideas and Lord Bacon's praise may have impressed him as commendable features' (p. 247). What Pagel may not have known is that there was a copy in the library of the London College of Physicians, on a shelf D1 containing mostly alchemical books. Harvey funded a new building for the library and donated his own books -- but perhaps not the Severinus (Christopher Merrett, Catalogus librorum, 1660, p. 11). Severinus, or Peder Sørensen to give him his Danish name, attended the University of Copenhagen. He studied medicine briefly in France and then returned to Copenhagen. Then in 1565 he set out with another noted Paracelsian, Johannes Pratensis, to study abroad -- in Germany, France and Italy. He completed the Idea medicina in France. 'Severinus was widely known in the iatrochemical circles of his time. In Denmark he was closely associated at court with Tycho Brahe, who was claimed by sixteenth and seventeenth-century chemists as a leading authority in this field.' (Debus, DSB, p. 334a). This copy belonged to an early seventeenth-century English provincial physician, Joshua Smarfett of Tenterden, Kent. Literature: Walter Pagel, Paracelsus. An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (2nd edition 1982); Ibid, William Harvey's Biological Ideas (1967, pp. 239--247); Ibid, Religion and Neoplatonism in Renaissance medicine (1985); Allen G. Debus, DSB 12:334--6; Ibid, The French Paracelsians (1991); Lauritz Martin Neilsen, Dansk bibliografi, 1482--[1600] (1919--33); Ian Mortimer, A Directory of Medical Personnel Qualified and Practising in the Diocese of Canterbury, circa 1560--1730 (no date, www.kentarchaeology.ac/authors/021.pdf).

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