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. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...

    London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.

    Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s...

    £475

  2. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    An Academy for grown Horsemen, containing the completest Instructions for Walking,...

    London, W. Dickinson, S. Hooper, and Messrs Robinsons, 1787 [colophon: Mount Vernon (NY), William Edwin Rudge, 1929].

    Limited edition, reprinted from the first, numbered 142 of 400 copies. A humorous parody of the manuals on horsemanship so fashionable in the late eighteenth century, Bunbury’s text was published pseudonymously as Geoffrey Gambado but the plates credited to his own name, with reference to the...

    £85

  3. CARNAP, Rudolf.

    Existe-t-il des premises de la science qui soient incontrôlables? [Abstract from ‘Scientia’].

    [N.p., n.p.,] September 1936.

    First edition. ‘All the premises on which science depends, when they are not of a purely conventional nature, rest on experience’: thus the exitus of this article, a decisive statement of the impossibility of a synthetic proposition being beyond empirical test. Carnap published it in response to...

    £100

  4. 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

  5. [CASTILLO Y SORIANO, José del.]

    Amor á la creacion. Poesia dedicada á la Sociedad Madrileña Protectora de los Animales y de...

    Madrid, Sociedad de Tipógrafos, 1879.

    Very rare survival: a poem in twenty-four stanzas each of five lines devoted to the celebration of animals and plants, dedicated to the Madrid Society for the protection of nature, and publicly read by the actress Carolina Civili on the occasion of the May 1879 exhibition of plants and birds....

    £375

  6. 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

  7. [CAVALRY.]

    Cours d’équitation militaire, a l’usage des corps de troupes a cheval, approuvé par s. exc. le ministre de la guerre.

    Saumur, H. Fournier for A. Degouy and Névo-Degouy, and Paris, Anselin, 1830.

    First edition of an encyclopædic work on horsemanship for the use of the French cavalry, with the suite of plates. ‘L’ouvrage est en effet une veritable encyclopédie hippique : hippologie, extérieur, emploi à la selle, au trait et au bat, alimentation, hygiène, maladies et accidens, haras...

    £225

  8. [CERVINI, Michael Antonio.]

    ‘Methodus medendi medicine partem complectens’, ‘Appendix de preiudiciis evitandis in methodo’;...

    Turin, July-August 1714.

    A substantial and highly interesting manuscript compendium, apparently unpublished, compiled by a medical student in Turin, in northern Italy, by the name of Michael Antonio Cervini, including numerous medical receipts and a treatise on surgery.

    £2500

  9. [CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.] 

    Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...

    Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695. 

    Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’. 

    £275

  10. [CHOLERA.]

    Istruzioni e regolamenti di privata sanitaria quarantina da osservarsi in caso di contagio per tenere lontano dalle...

    Milan, Angelo Bonfanti, 1831.

    First edition of an uncommon guide, printed in Milan at the height of the 1831-2 cholera pandemic, on preventive measures to be taken against contagion, and in particular on the maintenance of quarantine as a means of limiting the spread both of cholera and of other diseases.

    £250

  11. [CHOLERA.]

    Unterricht über die Erkenntniß, die erste Behandlung und die Verhütung der epidemischen Cholera für Nichtärzte....

    Lemgo, in der Meyerischen Hof-Buchdruckerey, 1831.

    Very rare, seemingly unrecorded, guide for lay people to the identification, initial treatment, and prevention of cholera, published at the height of the European pandemic of 1831-2 in the Westfalia town of Lemgo. The five sections deal with the diagnosis and symptoms of the disease, its treatment,...

    £250

  12. CHOPPIN, Henri.

    La cavalerie française … illustrée de nombreux dessins et de 16 gravures hors texte en couleurs.

    Paris, Garnier brothers, 1893.

    First edition of a well illustrated history of the French cavalry. A cavalry captain, Henri Choppin (1831–1916) published widely on the French military: the first of several works devoted to the cavalry, La cavalerie française is handsomely illustrated throughout and accompanied by sixteen...

    £175

  13. CHOYSELAT, Prudent le.

    Discours oeconomique, non moins utile que récréatif, monstrant comme de cinq cens livres pour une foys...

    Rouen, Martin le Menestrier 1612 [but ca. 1745].

    Early edition of an interesting ‘way to wealth’, in fact a guide to the management of poultry, first published 1569. An English translation was published in 1580 under the title A Discourse of housebandrie, described by Mary Aslin (Rothansted) as ‘the first book on poultry’. Brunet, Quérard...

    £550

  14. CIUCCI, Antonio Filippo.

    Promptuarium Chirurgicum in quo agitur de Morbis, qui indigent manuali Operatione Artis Chirurgiae.

    Macerata, Joseph Piccinus, 1679–1680.

    First edition, very rare, of this handbook of practical surgery, by the author of the first treatise of forensic medicine written in Italian.

    £2850

  15. COCCHI, Antonio.

    ‘Consulto medico sopra il contagio della tabe polmonare’.

    ‘Florence, 1753’.

    An attractively written manuscript copy of this important medical report on pulmonary tuberculosis composed for the health authorities in the city of Florence by the eminent physician Antonio Cocchi (1695–1758) on behalf of the city’s medical college.

    £450

  16. COLONNA, Fabio. 

    Φυτοβασανος, sive Plantarum aliquot historia … 

    Naples, Orazio Salviani, 1592. 

    First edition, a landmark in botanical illustration, ‘the first strictly botanical book with intaglio prints’ (Blunt). 

    £4000

  17. COPPENS, Charles.

    A brief text-book of logic and mental philosophy.

    New York, Schwartz, Kirwin & Fauss, 1891.

    First edition of Coppens’s text-book, written in response to Leo XIII’s injunction to ‘establish not only a well-adapted and solid method of instruction, but a method in perfect conformity with the Catholic faith, especially as regards Mental Philosophy, on which the right teaching of all the other...

    £30

  18. COPPERTHWAITE, R.H.

    The Turf and the Racehorse, describing Trainers and Training, the Stud-Farm, the Sires and Brood-Mares of the...

    London, Day & Son, 1865.

    First edition of a scarce account of mid-nineteenth-century race horses, including notes and anecdotes on breeding, buying, training, and racing, and with an extensive table of ‘the tried brood mares of the day’, showing their pedigrees and progeny.

    £160

  19. [CORFU.]

    Notificazione. Uffizio della segreteria del governo. Corfu, 7 Maggio 1816 …

    Corfu, ‘en te typographia tes dioikeseos’, [1816].

    A seemingly unrecorded bilingual broadside, in parallel Italian and Greek, reporting on cases of plague in the district of Leftimo on the island of Corfu, issued during the British protectorate in May 1816 and printed in the capital at the government press.

    £375

  20. COSTANZO, Gaetano.

    Qualche considerazione sui mezzi curativi adoperati nel ripartimento delle donne al manicomio di Palermo …

    Palermo, Giovanni Lorsnaider, 1876.

    Very rare first and only edition of this fascinating treatise on the care of women at the asylum for the insane in Palermo, by its chief medical officer Dr Gaetano Costanzo.

    £350