Advanced search

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.
Sort by
Author
Price
Date
Title

  1. CLATER, Francis.

    Every Man his own Farrier, or the whole Art of Farriery laid open, containing Cures for every Disorder that useful...

    Newark, J. Tomlinson for the Author, 1783.

    Rare first edition of one of the most successful manuals on farriery.Every Man his own Farrier in 1783 and followed its success with Every Man his own Cattle Doctor in 1810, by which...

    £950

  2. CLAVELL, John.

    A Recantation of an Ill Led Life: or, a Discoverie of the High-way Law. With ... many cautelous Admonitions and...

    London, Printed by A.M. for Richard Meighen ... 1634.

    Third and final edition, incorporating Clavell’s final revisions (it is 138 lines longer than the first edition of 1628), and a new preface by ‘his friend’ Richard Meighen.

    £3250

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. 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

  6. COUR, Pieter Almanus van.

    Toevlucht ofte heylsaeme Remedien voor alderhande Siektens en Accidenten, die de Peerden zouden konnen...

    Ghent, Jan Gimblet, 1783.

    ‘Second edition’ (third) of a Dutch farriery manual, first printed in Bruges in 1722. OCLC finds only two copies worldwide (Amsterdam and the Flemish Heritage Library).

    £675

  7. COX, John Roalfe.

    Horses in Accident and Disease: Notes and Sketches.

    Edinburgh, George Waterston & Sons for David Douglas, 1892.

    First edition of an elegantly illustrated veterinary work. An early advocate of the use of chloroform anaesthetic when operating on horses, J. Roalfe Cox here offers tender line drawings and brief descriptions of twenty-eight equine ailments.

    £70

  8. CREVE, Carl Caspar.

    Vom Metallreize, einem neuentdeckten untrüglichen Prüfungsmittel des wahren Todes. Mit einer Kupfertafel.

    Leipzig and Gera, Wilhelm Heinsius, 1796.

    First edition of this uncommon contribution to the medical literature surrounding proof of death, an issue widely debated by lawyers and physicians in the later eighteenth century, especially in Germany.

    £550

  9. CUVIER, Georges, and Edward BLYTH (editor).

    The animal Kingdom, arranged after its Organization, forming a natural...

    London, William S. Orr & Co., 1851.

    Third Blyth edition of Cuvier’s Règne animal. A seminal work of natural history and comparative anatomy, the Règne animal was first published in December 1816 and translated into English in parts issued from 1824 to 1835. The work was edited and enlarged in 1840 by the zoologist...

    £175

  10. DE NASCA, Giuseppe.

    Intorno all’uso del laudano concentrato del cav. Quadri per curare parecchie malattie degli occhi. Memoria...

    Naples, Giovanni Battista Seguim, 1828.

    Very rare tract on the use of concentrated laudanum in the treatment of various eye complaints by the Sicilian physician Giuseppe de Nasca (1803–1893).

    £550

  11. DEPARCIEUX, Antoine.

    Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine; d’où l’on déduit la manière de déterminer...

    Paris, chez les frères Guerin, 1746.

    A large, crisp and illustrious copy of the first edition of a classic of statistical science: it is the first to define expectation of life – which Deparcieux calls ‘la vie moyenne’ – and the first to contain life tables for males and females. ‘The first French work in the actuarial...

    £5500

  12. DESCARTES, René.

    Meditationes de prima philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia, & animae humanae a corpore distinctio, demonstrantur.

    Amsterdam, Blaeu, 1644.

    Remarkable sammelband gathering two important Descartes editions and two notable contemporary responses, by Descartes’ critic Gassendi and his admirer de La Forge; annotated in two early hands: an eloquent witness to seventeenth-century Dutch philosophical debate about certainty of knowledge, mind...

    £5500

  13. DESCARTES, René, and Louis de la FORGE (editor).

    Tractatus de homine, et de formatione foetus.

    Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1677.

    First and only Elzevir edition, and the first edition of the better Latin text of Descartes’s Traité de l’homme. De homine ‘is the first work in the history of science and medicine to construct a unified system of human physiology that presents man as a purely material and...

    £1100

  14. DIKREITER, Otto, and Renée SINTENIS (illustrator).

    Du und Dein Pferd: Ein anmutiges, belehrendes, und ergötzliches...

    Berlin, Königsberg, & Leipzig, Kanter Verlag, [c. 1938].

    First edition (seventh to tenth thousand) of a charmingly illustrated work. The collection of short pieces of poetry and prose relating to horses, gathered from sources ranging from Shakespeare and Goethe to Xenophon and the Koran, is illustrated by the German artist Renée Sintenis (1888–1965),...

    £80

  15. DONOVAN, Edward. 

    An epitome of the natural history of the insects of China: comprising figures and descriptions of upwards of...

    London, Printed for the Author by T. Bensley, 1798[–99].

    First edition of this splendid work devoted to the insects of China by the great natural historian and artist Edward Donovan (1768–1837), including some of the most beautiful of all his plates. 

    £5750

  16. DREVES, [Johann Friedrich Peter,] and [Friedrich Gottlob] HAYNE [and Johann Stephan CAPIEUX (engraver)].

    Choix...

    Leipzig, Voss et compagnie, 1802.

    First edition in French, the Plesch set, with 125 handsomely hand-coloured botanical plates, adapted from the German edition finished the previous year. Issued under the title Botanisches Bilderbuch für die Jugend und Freunde der Pflanzenkunde, the work had first appeared in twenty-eight...

    £2750

  17. DURINI, Angelo.

    Versi latini dell’ eminentissimo Sig. Cardinale Angelo Durini sopra il Cocchio Volante del Sig. di Montgolfier...

    [Milan, 1784.]

    First edition, with a parallel Italian translation, of these Latin verses commemorating the first Montgolfier experiments with balloon flight by the Milanese diplomat and cardinal Angelo Maria Durini (1725–1796).

    £1250

  18. DUTROCHET, Henri. 

    Recherches sur l’endosmose et sur la cause physique de ce phénomène (Extrait des Annales de Chimie et de...

    [Paris, imprimerie de Veuve Thuau, 1832.] 

    An interesting article on endosmosis by the important French physiologist Henri Dutrochet (1776–1847), renowned for his work on osmosis and cell theory.  ‘Although the conditions of Dutrochet’s experiments were rather simple and did not allow of great accuracy, he made the first important...

    £175

  19. DVIGUBSKII, Ivan Alekseevich.

    Opyt estestvennoi istorii vsekh zhivotnykh Rossiiskoi Imperii … S izobrazheniiami zhivotnykh. [Fly-title:]...

    Moscow, University Press, 1831

    First edition, rare, one of a series of six works on the flora and fauna of the Russian Empire, published 1829-1833 under the same general title. The present volume covers molluscs, including cephalopods and gastropods.

    £2000

  20. ECOLE DE MEDECINE DE MONTPELLIER.

    A collection of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to and defended at the Medical...

    Montpellier, various publishers, 1800–1810.

    An extraordinary collection, bound up very soon after the last was published, of eighty-seven doctoral dissertations presented to the ancient medical school at Montpellier in the first ten years of the nineteenth century. The four volumes are divided into two sets, the first containing theses...

    £1750