Elizabethan medicine
Annotated medical sammelband
£14,490
Rare Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Photographs
Auction: 19 June 2024 from 10:00 BST
Description
4 works in 1 volume, 8vo, old calf ruled in blind, covers each with blind-stamped monogram ‘TM’ either side of central floral lozenge (possibly later), contents comprise:
[?Cartwright, Thomas]. [An Hospitall for the Diseased. Wherein are to be found moste excellent and approved medicines … Very necessarie and profitable for this tyme of common plague and mortalitie … Newly augmented and inlarged. Gathered by T. C.]. London: for Edward White, c.1584. [6] 70 pp., losses to A1 (title-page) and A2 [STC 4305];
[Vicary, Thomas]. [The English-Mans Treasure with the True Anatomie of Mans Body. London: Thomas Creede, 1596 or 1599?]. 55-110 pp. only [STC 24709/24709.5];
Levens, Peter. A right profitable booke for all diseases. Called the Path-way to health. London: [by Edward Allde for] Edward White, 1587. [4] 1-3 [1] pp., 3-59 64-94, lacking quire Q and leaves R1, U2-3, 2A4, 2B1, and all after 2B4 (f. 94) [STC 15533];
[Langham, William]. [The Garden of Health]. [London, ?1597]. Pp. 201-348 only [STC 15195].
With some 25 blanks (including endpapers and interleaves) annotated by various hands (contemporary and near-contemporary to 18th century), including medical and quasi-occult receipts e.g. ‘How to goo invisible’, ‘If a woman can not conceive take harte horn to pouder … put it about her and doe the act of generation she shall have a man chyld', ‘To slay a cancer in on[e] night …', ‘To healle the pain of the gut …’, ‘Ane aproved medicen for the … jaundis’, the properties of different plants (with Latin names given: Prunela, ranunculus, salix, etc.), ownership inscriptions including one ‘Thomas Mille, Chirurgion’, doggerel verse on bees, etc. Occasional contemporary marginalia to text;
Binding worn, general damp-staining, soiling, tears and losses, one initial blank (with annotations) loose
Provenance
From the library of the late Robert Bogdan (1950-2023), of Boghead of Torries and Dykehead of Avochie, Aberdeenshire, geography master at Charterhouse and sometime chairman of the Scottish Castles Association.