Science

Contact Andrea Mazzocchi

Science at Quaritch is broadly defined, ranging from medicine, anatomy, pharmacology (including herbals) and natural history to astronomy, physics, chemistry and mathematics.

An interest in the origins of modern chemistry has led to a specialisation in works on alchemy and distillation, and from there we have also branched out into occultism and hermeticism. We have developed an interest in gastronomy and books on nutrition and wine, an area which over the years has become one of our specialities.
  1. GALILEI, Galileo.

    Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche, intorno a due nuove scienze attenenti alla mecanica & i movimenti locali...

    Leiden, Elzevier, 1638.

    First edition of the first modern textbook of physics and the foundation of the science of mechanics; a very important copy, owned and annotated by Pierre Varignon, intimate friend of Newton, Leibniz, and the Bernoullis.

    £195000

  2. BONET, Nicolas.

    Habes Nicholai Bonetti viri p[er]spicacissimi quattuor volumina: Metaphysicam videl[icet] naturale[m] phylosophia[m]...

    Venice, Boneto Locatello for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 1505.

    First collected edition of the works of the French Franciscan Friar Nicolas Bonet (c. 1280–1343), owned and annotated by the Italian historian, biographer, and physician Paolo Giovio (1486–1552).

    £4000

  3. NEWTON, Isaac.

    Opuscula Mathematica, philosophica et philologica. Collegit partimque Latine vertit ac recensuit Joh. Castillioneus...

    Lausanne and Geneva, Bousquet & soc., 1744.

    First edition of Newton’s collected works, a major tool in the dissemination of Newton’s science and a major publication in the history of science.  The edition, edited and introduced by the Pisa alumnus Giovanni Salvemini da Castiglione, contains twenty-six works (which, while having appeared...

    £3500

  4. HUMBLOT, F.

    Journal de voyage ...

    France, June-September 1866.

    A handsome manuscript on mining engineering, apparently unpublished, recording visits undertaken by the engineer F. Humblot to coal mines and iron works in eastern and southern France in 1866, containing well over one hundred beautifully executed technical drawings.

    £3500

  5. FINÉ, Oronce. 

    Opere di Orontio Fineo … divise in cinque parti, arimetica, geometria, cosmografia, e orivoli, tradotte da...

    Venice, Francesco Franceschi, 1587. 

    First Italian edition of the works of Finé.  Among the most influential scientific scholars of the sixteenth century, over three decades at the Collège Royale Oronce Finé (1494–1555) made considerable contributions to various branches of mathematics, from geometry and arithmetic to astronomy...

    £2750

  6. [SACROBOSCO, Johannes de.] 

    CLAVIUS, Christophorus.  In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarius, nunc iterum ab ipso Auctore...

    Rome, Francesco Zanetti for Domenico Basa, 1581. 

    Third edition, the first to contain Clavius’s condemnation of Copernicus, with ten highly detailed woodcut diagrams of solar and lunar eclipses not included in the first edition. 

    £2500

  7. PADOVANI, Giovanni. 

    Opus de compositione et usu multiformium horologiorum solarium pro diversis mundi regionibus, idque ubique...

    Venice, Francesco de Franceschi, 1570. 

    Scarce first edition of Padovani’s treatise on sundials, providing illustrated instruction on the use of various horizontal and vertical sundials and on calculating latitude, this copy owned and annotated by the author’s friend and collaborator Johannes Andrea de Muscis. 

    £2500

  8. PARKER, Thomas Netherton.

    Leaves out of the Book of a Country Gentleman.

    Oswestry, W. Price, London, Longman & co., and Shrewsbury, Eddowes & Leake, 1847.

    First and only edition of this very rare compilation by Parker of his farm and estate experiments and inventions, one of one hundred copies privately published, and presented by the author to the Earl of Powis.

    £1950

  9. CATANEO, Girolamo. 

    De arte bellica, sive de designandis ac construendis arcibus et propugnaculis, necnon et de iis oppugnandis,...

    Lyons, Jean de Tournes, 1600.

    First Latin edition, scarce on the market, of this handsomely illustrated military classic, first published in Italian at Brescia in 1564.  Edited and published by Jean de Tournes, this edition is dedicated to Henry IV of France.  The military architect Cataneo (active 1540–1584) was considered,...

    £1850

  10. SHELDRAKE, Timothy.

    The Causes of Heat and Cold in the several Climates and Situations of this Globe, so far as they depend upon...

    London, printed for and sold by the author … and by M. Cooper, 1756.

    First edition, rare on the market, of this work on climate by the botanist Timothy Sheldrake (c. 1691–c. 1759) evidencing his interest in tropical plants.

    £1275

  11. TALIANI, Giuseppe. 

    Orologi riflessi, per mezo di un picciolo specchio parallelo o perpendicolare all’orizonte. 

    Macerata, Filippo Camacci, 1648. 

    Only recorded edition, rare, of this work by mathematician Taliani on the construction of sundials in the interior of buildings, to be achieved through mirrors reflecting solar rays – our copy uniquely furnished with a contemporary large hand-drawn representation of the face of a sundial. ...

    £950

  12. [GUARINI, Giambattista Lascaris].

    Ragionamenti filosofici.

    Rome, Gioacchino Puccinelli, 1785[-6].

    Only edition, very uncommon, of this collection of 33 essays on scientific and philosophical subjects, published with the aspiration to provide a complete course of physics and philosophy. The work is divided into four parts. The first deals with materialism and idealism, the physical attributes of bodies,...

    £875

  13. MEITNER, Lise, and Otto R. FRISCH. 

    On the Products of the Fission of Uranium and Thorium under Neutron Bombardment. 

    Copenhagen, Ejnar Munksgaard, 1939. 

    First edition of this highly important paper, published in Det Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab.  Mathematisk-Fysiske Meddelelser, vol. 17, no. 5. 

    £850

  14. SACCHI, Giovenale. 

    Del numero e delle misure delle corde musiche e loro corrispondenze.  Dissertazione del P. D. Giovenale...

    Milan, [Giuseppe Mazzucchelli (colophon),] 1761. 

    First edition of Sacchi’s first work: a theoretical study of music and acoustic from a mathematical and physical perspective built upon the most innovative eighteenth-century physics. 

    £850

  15. MORTON, John.

    The natural History of Northampton-Shire, with some Account of the Antiquities, to which is annex’d a Transcript...

    London, R. Knaplock and R. Wilkin, 1712.

    First edition of Morton’s systematic natural history of Northamptonshire. Compiled over the course of a decade, Morton’s Natural History provides a careful account of the natural history, minerals, fossils, and geography of the county, accompanied by fourteen large copper-engravings....

    £775

  16. SCHÖFFLER, Benedict.

    Die Phototelegraphie und das Elektrische Fernsehen.

    Wien und Leipzig, Wilhelm Braumüller, 1898.

    A treatise by a German artillery officer on the electrical transmission of images, occasioned by newspaper reports of Jan Szczepanik’s invention. ‘On February 24, 1897, Jan Szczepanik and Ludwig Kleinberg of Austria applied for a patent for a method and apparatus for reproducing pictures and the...

    £750

  17. RIEMANN, Georg Friedrich Bernhard.

    Ein Beitrag zu den Untersuchungen über die Bewegung eines flüssigen gleichartigen Ellipsoids.

    Göttingen, Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1861.

    the very rare offprint issue from the abhandlungen der königlichen gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttigen of riemann’s classic paper on rotating liquid ellipsoids, containing solutions of the equations of fluid dynamics that were later applied to the physics of rotating stars by chandrasekhar...

    £750

  18. CARON, Jean-Charles-Félix.

    Compendium institutionum philosophiae, in quo de rhetorica et philosophia, tractatur. Ad usum candidatorum...

    Paris, N. M. Tilliard, 1770.

    Very uncommon guide, by the Parisian surgeon Jean-Charles-Félix Caron, to the philosophy student in the University of Paris needs to know in order to graduate first as bachelor and then as master of arts in the university. The work is essentially a kind of bluffer’s guide: “there are people who,...

    £750

  19. BOTTO, Giuseppe Domenico.

    Observations microscopiques sur les mouvements des globules végétaux suspendus dans un menstrue.

    [Turin], Imprimerie Royale, [1840].

    An extremely rare offprint from the Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino on Brownian Movement and a contribution to the ‘heated controversy with the best known botanists of the world [started by the] discovery that made [Amici] famous ... that of the fertilization of phanerogams, particularly...

    £675

  20. MARZAGLIA, Gaetano.

    Fascetto di pratiche matematiche spiegate alle persone popolari per uso del comercio umano, e civile, in questa...

    Verona, Dionisio Ramanzini, 1780.

    A lovely copy of the second edition, considerably augmented from the first of 1754, of this book of applied mathematical problems by the Veronese mathematician Gaetano Marzaglia (or Marcegaglia, 1716–1787), heavily influenced by the work of Wolff, who provides the motto to the book, and whose works...

    £650