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Full Title: "LIBELLUS, QUO DEMONSTRATUR: CICUTAM Non solum usu interno tutissime exhiberi, sed et esse simul remedium valde utile in multis morbis, qui hucusque curatu impossibiles dicebantur. Editio Altera. [BOUND WITH] Libellus Secundus. [BOUND WITH] Supplementum Necessarium. Three volumes in one." pp. (16), 110; 292; 67 + Wonderful folding engraved plate of the Giant Hemlock. Foxed. 8vo. Contemporary French full mottled leather binding, slightly worn at extremities. Manuscript of the first owner, a physician, (J. F.?) Coste. An important work on the medical properties and other aspects of hemlock, aconite, hyoscyamus, colchicum, etc. Before this publication, these plants were considered highly poisonous and had been rarely used in medicine owing to the difficulty of accurately estimating their doses and the danger this presented to the patient. Anton Storck, a 19-year-old Viennese doctor, in 1760 repeatedly sipped tea laced with hemlock, said to be the suicide drug of Socrates and believed in Storck's time to be beneficial against pain. The experiment so terrified Storck that he lost the ability to speak temporarily, but he suffered no lasting ill effects, and went on to publish this study. There is a direct line from Storck to the Americans Frederick Prescott and Scott Smith, who in the 1940s had themselves so paralyzed temporarily by curare that not even an eyelid could blink, thus demonstrating that the deadly poison could immobilize patients and revolutionize surgery. Throughout medical history researchers have served deliberately as guinea pigs because animal experiments can work only up to a point. Blake, p. 434; Waring 379. Quite scarce and important. **PRICE JUST REDUCED! W153