Tinnitus, diabetes, manic depression: a medical manual drawing on Avicenna

Concoregio, Giovanni. Practica nova medicine [...]. Summula [...] de curis febrium.

(Venice, heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 19 Febr. 1515).

Folio (218 x 304 mm). 101 ff., final blank. With woodcut printer's device at the end and numerous woodcut initials. Modern red morocco, blindstamped to style, with gilt spine and inner dentelle. Marbled endpapers. All edges sprinkled in red. In cloth slipcase.

 8,500.00

A rare medical compendium drawing strongly on the Arabic physicians who dominated the medieval medical schools of France and Northern Italy, including the author's treatise on fevers (fol. 68 ff.), based on Avicenna, who is variously quoted. Some of the surprisingly modern ailments discussed include tinnitus (fol. 40), diabetes (fol. 61), and manic depression (an extensive chapter, fol. 13-16). This is the third edition of the collection first published thus in 1501 (not counting the only incunabular edition of 1485). "Concoreggio, born in Milan around 1380, was made professor in Bologna in 1404 before teaching at the Universities of Pavia, Florence and (in 1439) Milan. His works are composed after the model of the Arabs, without much personal observation, and were published as a collection after his death in Pavia around the year 1440" (cf. Hirsch).

Some waterstaining to margins (more pronounced near beginning). Bound in a sumptuous modern morocco binding decorated with rollstamps showing Renaissance heads, likely for the 20th-century physician and collector Piergiorgio Borio (his bookplate on the front pastedown). Only 3 copies in Italy (Biblioteca comunale dell'Archiginnasio Bologna; Biblioteca Angelica Roma; Biblioteca Casanatense Roma).

References

Edit 16, CNCE 14741. Durling 1008. Hirsch VI, 645. Sangiorgio, Cenni storici sulle due Università di Pavia e di Milano (1831), p. 57f. Brambilla I, 128. Astruc 211.