Sciences occultes

1571 · 015795 — Venetiis Venice: In Officina Valgrisiana 1571. Illustrated with many hundreds of half-page woodcuts. pp 14 922 13 the title page is laid down and has slight losses the next leaf is restored at the corner with no loss of text the preliminary index is a bit thumbed and marked a little marginal staining to the last hundred pages a little marginal staining and marking on occasional pages but overall very firm and tight and in better condition than many copies. There are very neat early manuscript notes on many pages mainly limited to the common English names. Contemporary simple lined calf rebacked and with new endpapers in the early twentieth century with the original spine laid down. An inked paper title label on the spine. The Hartland Library copy with labels and manuscript notes attached to the front endpapers. RARE. The Library was formed by Edwin Sydney Hartland and was a diverse but major collection of herbals archaeology and anthropology. It was donated to Gloucestershire County Council in 1936 and was eventually dispersed around 2010. This the first edition of a digest of Mattioli's commentaries on Dioscorides expressed in the form of an encyclopedia of plants giving synonyms classification description locale and medicinal qualities and uses. A careful student of botany he described 100 new plants and coordinated the medical botany of his time in his Discorsi "Commentaries" on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides. The first edition of Mattioli's work appeared in 1544 in Italian. In addition to identifying the plants originally described by Dioscorides Mattioli added descriptions of some plants not in Dioscorides and not of any known medical use thus marking a transition from the study of plants as a field of medicine to a study of interest in its own right. In addition the woodcuts in Mattioli's work were of a high standard allowing recognition of the plant even when the text was obscure. A noteworthy inclusion is an early variety of tomato the first documented example of the vegetable being grown and eaten in Europe. There is also an early illustration of a coconut. First Edition. Full-Leather. Good. In Officina Valgrisiana Hardcover