A PHYSICIAN SENT TO PONDICHERRY BY THE POPE
BORGHESI, Giovanni, and Giovanni Mario de’ CRESCIMBENI, translator.
Lettera scritta da Pondisceri a’ 10 di febbraio 1704 ... nella quale si contengono, oltre a un pieno racconto del viaggio da Roma fino alle coste dell’Indie orientali, varie nuove osservazioni mediche, bottaniche, naturali, e d’altri generi ...
Rome, [Gaetano degli] Zenobi, ‘Stampatore, e Intagliatore di sua Santità’, 1705.
12mo, pp. [xiii], [1 (blank)], 245, [16], [1 (blank)], with folding woodcut plate after p. 22 and folding engraved plate after p. 30; a few woodcut illustrations in the text, woodcut papal arms of Clement XI to title; sporadic light marginal foxing (particularly to first and final quires), early repair to lower corner of A8 not touching text; otherwise an attractive copy in contemporary vellum over boards, raised bands, spine lettered in manuscript, edges speckled red and blue; a few very light marks, corners lightly bumped; cancelled eighteenth-century ownership inscription to title, manuscript shelflabel to front pastedown (faded), occasional modern pencilled annotations.
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Lettera scritta da Pondisceri a’ 10 di febbraio 1704 ... nella quale si contengono, oltre a un pieno racconto del viaggio da Roma fino alle coste dell’Indie orientali, varie nuove osservazioni mediche, bottaniche, naturali, e d’altri generi ...
First edition of this account of a physician’s journey from Rome to India via the Canary Islands and the Cape of Good Hope as part of Pope Clement XI’s delegation to China, printed by the papal printer Gaetano degli Zenobi.
Borghesi was ‘appointed the physician of the papal mission headed by the Patriarch of Antioch, Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon, sent by Pope Clement XI to China to investigate the painful issues which had arisen between the various missionary orders, in particular the accusations levelled at the Jesuits … giving rise to the age-old issue known as the “Chinese Rites”’ (DBI, trans.).
On his way, he spent several months in Pondicherry (Puducherry), on India’s south-eastern coast, in 1703–4; the mission reached China in 1705, where Borghesi would die in 1714. The present account provides details of the flora, fauna, and customs Borghesi encountered on his journey, including medical observations on maladies (among them scurvy and an affliction of the eyes known as goccia serena) and food eaten aboard the ship (including baccalà and meat cooked in seawater). Adapted from Borghesi’s 1704 long Latin letter to his mentor, the medical professor Paolo Manfredi, the present translation is the work of the poet Giovanni Mario Crescimbeni (1663–1728), founding member of Rome’s Accademia degli Arcadi.
We find a single copy in the UK, at the British Library. OCLC adds copies in the US at the University of Chicago, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, Cornell, Harvard, NLM, NYPL, and Stanford.
