Martayan Lan, Inc.

BENZI, Ugo da Siena [HUGO SENENSIS] Consilia... saluberrima ad omnes egritudines noviter correcta & ad optimum ordinem redacta additis multis prius non impressis eiusdem nuper inventis: nonnullisque aliis utilissimis consiliis. Venice heirs of Ottaviano Scoto 1518

Folio (307 x 215 mm), ff 88, with one large and numerous medium-size white-on-black initials and large printer’s device on last leaf; a few small wormholes on inner blank margin of last two leaves, a fine, unpressed copy in an early vellum binding utilizing manuscript leaves over pasteboard, spine with eighteenth-century label and remains of mottling.

Second Venetian edition, and second printing of the complete consilia of the Sienese physician Ugo Benzi (1376-1439). This was the first systematic collection of case histories, with diagnoses and treatments, to be compiled. The consilia are arranged to cover all ailments a capite ad pedes (from head to toe). The earliest dated consilium is 1420 and the latest 1438.Ugo Benzi was professor of medicine at Siena, Pavia, and Padua, and appears to have taught at the Sorbonne. The compilation of consilia was an innovation in Western medicine beginning at the time of Ugo Benzi. This increasing body of direct observation formed a counter to the authority of the texts of Hippocrates and Galen, and helped lead to the liberation of medicine from classical authority. Ugo Benzi’s consilia are especially important for the first accurate diagnoses of epilepsy, cancer of the nose and throat, asthma, and lipothomia.Much of the text is concerned with diet and a general regimen sanitatis. Lockwood, the author of the most thorough modern study of Ugo Benzi, wrote that: ‘Sometimes one wonders whether one is reading a medical opinion or a cookbook’ and he goes on to give examples of Ugo Benzi’s ‘recipes’. See D.P. Lockwood, Ugo Benzi, medieval philosopher and physician (1951), pp 283-317.The first printing of any of the consilia (eighty five) was in 1482 in Bologna. The present edition is based on the Venice 1503 edition by the same printers, and which it resembles typographically.

*Wellcome 3353; cf Stillwell 300 (first edition); not in Durling; NUC: CtY-M NRU.

$US5500

This item is listed on Bibliopoly by Martayan Lan, Inc.; click here for further details.