Lemnius, Levinus
The Secret Miracles of Nature
£693
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 8 February 2023 at 10:00 GMT
Description
London: printed by Jo. Streater, and are to be sold by Humphrey Moseley, John Sweeting, John Clark, and George Sawbridge, 1658. 4to (26.2 x 17cm), 19th-century half calf, morocco and printed book-labels of Thomas Bird, rector of St Fagan's, Cardiff, front cover near-detached, contents browned, title-page extended in fore margin, K4 closely trimmed along fore edge just shaving side-notes verso, small spill-burns to V1 and V3, custom quarter morocco slipcase [ESTC R8382; Ferguson, Books of Secrets 521; Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chimica II p. 23; cf. Duveen pp. 349-50]
Footnote
Note: First edition in English of the author's De miraculis occultis naturae, first published at Antwerp in 1559. ESTC traces ten copies in UK libraries. Among the notable passages is a description of Avicenna's 'counsel for copulation': 'Avicenna, no base fellow, nor an authour of the lowest rank, describes the time and manner of procreating a sex: When (saith he) the terms are spent, and the womb is cleansed, which is commonly in five dayes, or 7. at most; if a man lye with his wife from the first day she is purged to the fifth, she will conceive a male; but from the fifth to the eighth day, a female; again, from the eighth day to the twelfth, a male again; but after that, a male again; but after that numbers of dayes, an hermaphrodite' (p. 28).