PARAPHRASING PARACELSUS
[PARACELSUS.
Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi eremitae philosophi summi operum latine redditorum tomus II … Basel, Pietro Perna, 1575.]
[Basel, Pietro Perna, 1575.]
Vol. II only (of II), 8vo, pp. [iii–xiv] (of xvi), 16, 19–30, 33–‘707’ (recte 799), [1, blank], 143, [1, blank]; wanting bifolia (?)1.8 and b1.8; woodcut portrait to (?)2r, woodcut initials; first and last leaf dusty and worn, first quire worn and loose, creasing to corners towards end, occasional marks; bound in contemporary English vellum, title in ink and on paper label to spine; worn and soiled, spine misshapen, front joint detached; annotations in a few early English hands to c. 550 pp.; engraved bookplate of Exeter Cathedral Library dated 1749 on inside front cover, with manuscript shelfmark ‘E, 14 | 21'.
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Aureoli Theophrasti Paracelsi eremitae philosophi summi operum latine redditorum tomus II … Basel, Pietro Perna, 1575.]
The second half of a two-volume edition of the Latin works of Paracelsus (1493–1541), the great Swiss physician and alchemist, with profuse annotations by a number of early English readers.
Completed in 1530, the text describes the four pillars of medicine: natural philosophy as the science of the things dwelling in nature; astronomy as the interplay between cosmos and humans; alchemy as the purification and transformation of matter and especially of drugs; and the virtue or ethics of the physician.
Of particular note here is a manuscript paraphrase of large parts of the Paragranum running through the lower margins of in excess of fifty pages. A considerable number of marginalia are also present in parts of the Paramirum (1531), providing summaries (occasionally in the form of running titles in the upper margins) and picking out words and phrases. Our annotators naturally show an interest in the key Paracelsian theories expounded in the text: the pathogenic action of the three primary substances sulphur, mercury, and salt; the theory of the primordial matrix as a generalisation of the maternal womb; and the concept of tartaric diseases. Other marginalia encompass humours, cholic, madness, anatomy, hunger and thirst, types of doctors, the relationship between medicine and God, digestion, death, heat, dung, urine, vomit, sweat, women, and semen.
USTC 614832; VD16 P 382; NLM/Durling 3503; Wellcome 4791.
