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Science

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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.
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  1. LEE, Henry.

    [Cover title:] The White Whale …

    London, R. K. Burt & Co. … 1878.

    First edition, an account of the white Beluga whale by Henry Lee of the Royal Aquarium in Brighton, specifically of the first such whale successfully transported to England, exhibited for four days in 1877 before its death from pneumonia; and of four further whales transported the following year....

    £225

  2. LEIGH, William R.

    The Western Pony … Foreword by James L. Clark.

    New York, Huntington Press, 1933.

    First edition of Leigh’s finely printed account of the Western pony. A painter known primarily for his scenes of the American West, William Robinson Leigh (1866-1955) produced several equine paintings, here reproduced in colour by Max Jaffé of Vienna.

    £450

  3. L’HÔPITAL, Guillaume François Antoine, marquis de. 

    Analyse des infiniment petits, pour l’intelligence des lignes...

    Paris, François Montalant, 1715. 

    Second edition (first 1696) of l’Hôpital’s famous Analyse, the first textbook on differential calculus, inspired by the work of Leibniz and the Bernoulli brothers, this copy profusely annotated by an anonymous but proficient eighteenth-century mathematician. 

    £3500

  4. LIEBIG, Justus von.

    Autograph letter to the publishers Heinrich Ludwig Brönner.

    Darmstadt, 16 September 1847.

    Letter from the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) to H. L. Brönner, the Frankfurt publishers and booksellers named after their eighteenth-century founder.

    £750

  5. LINNAEUS, Carl (or von LINNÉ), and James JENKINSON (translator). 

    A generic and specific Description of...

    Ashburner, and Lancaster, A. Ashburner, 1775. 

    First edition of this provincially printed partial translation of Linnaeus’s Genera plantarum.  It precedes both William Withering’s The Botanical Arrangement of all the Vegetables naturally growing in Great Britain (1776), the first such work to be based on Linnaean taxonomy,...

    £225

  6. LISTER, Joseph.

    Three autograph letters, signed, to Sir John Evans.

    London, 12 Park Crescent, Portland Place, 19 April 1896 and 18 February 1898, and Bath, York House Hotel, 20 November 1898.

    Three letters by the great surgeon Joseph Lister to the archaeologist and geologist Sir John Evans (1823–1908), who was treasurer of the Royal Society during Lister’s presidency.

    £750

  7. LOCATELLI, Lodovico. 

    Theatro d’Arcani … nel quale si tratta dell’arte chimica, et suoi arcani, con gli afforismi d’Ippocrate...

    Milan, Gio. Pietro Ramellati, 1644. 

    First edition of Locatelli’s alchemical tract, which includes the first Italian translation of Paracelsus. 

    £2500

  8. [LONDON ZOO.] HARVEY, William (illustrator).

    The Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society delineated … Vol. I:...

    Chiswick, Charles Wittingham, for London, Charles Tilt, 1831.

    First edition, second issue, of the first record of the menagerie of the Zoological Society. Founded in 1826 with botanical gardens and a zoological collection at Regent’s Park, the Zoological Society of London was soon established as the foremost natural history collection in Europe, receiving...

    £175

  9. [LOO, Pieter van, (attributed).] 

    156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits. 

    [Holland, c. 1760–80]. 

    A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). 

    £110000

  10. [LUXATION.]

    Sammelband of twenty-six works on dislocation.

    France, Germany, Italy, 1803–1882.

    A collection of twenty-six rare works relating to luxations, all once in the library of the Société de Chirurgie of Paris, several presented by their authors, and very few present in UK or US libraries.

    £750

  11. [MABBUT, George].

    Sir Isaac Newton’s tables for renewing and purchasing the leases of cathedral-churches and colleges, according...

    London, printed for Thomas Astley, 1742

    Sixth edition, first published in 1686, this issue was sometimes also published with a separate title page and imprint reading, ‘The money’d man’s pocket-book’, London, 1742’ immediately preceding the title-page of the second part. A series of tables calculating the amounts owed on leases based...

    £125

  12. MAGNER, D.

    The new System of Educating Horses, including Instructions on Feeding, Watering, Stabling, Shoeing, etc., with Treatment...

    Philadelphia, Burk & M’Fetridge, 1881.

    Twelfth edition of a well illustrated manual on equestrianism, principally the training of horses. ‘The horse is an animal of high and spirited organization, endowed by his Creator with capabilities and faculties which sufficiently resemble man’s to come under the same general law of education...

    £65

  13. MANFREDI, Girolamo, and Pedro de RIBAS, translator. 

    Libro llamado El porque provechosissimo para la conservacion...

    Alcalá de Henares, Juan Iñiguez de Lequerica, 1587 [(colophon:) Hernan Ramirez, 1589]. 

    Extremely rare, early Alcalá-printed edition of Pedro de Ribas’s Spanish translation of Manfredi’s popular Liber de Homine, a regimen sanitatis in question-and-answer form, in part censored by the translator.  

    £1250

  14. MAPLET, John, and W.H. DAVIES (editor).

    A greene Forest, or a naturall Historie, wherein may bee seene first the...

    London, Hesperides Press, 1930.

    Limited edition, numbered 31 of fifty copies on Millbourne pure rag hand-made paper, signed by Davies.

    £75

  15. MARINIS, Dominico de. 

    Dissertatio philosophico-medica de re monstrosa à Capuccino Pisauri per urinam excreta.  Plura de sanguinis...

    Rome, typis Iacobi Mascardi ... sumptibus Ben Carrarae, 1678. 

    First edition of this scarce dissertation on worms focussing on the extraordinary case of a Capuchin preacher from Pesaro who in 1677 passed a ‘monster’ worm in his urine, which upon subsequent examination was declared to be a serpent. 

    £1850

  16. MARKHAM, ‘J.’ [Gervase], G. JEFFERIES, ‘and Experienced INDIANS’, [and C.D. LESHER (editor)].

    The Citizen...

    Chambersburg, Thomas J. Wright, [c. 1839].

    Undated Chambersburg edition. Among the most popular farriery manuals in America, the Experienced Farrier remained in print almost a century after its first appearance, with this Chambersburg edition following those of Wilmington and Baltimore. Intended, like its predecessors, for the common...

    £250

  17. MARLBOROUGH, John Churchill, Duke of.

    Document, signed ‘Marlborough’, appointing a gunner at the Canadian settlement...

    [London,] Office of Ordnance, 24 December 1714.

    A commission appointing the intended recipient (never filled in) ‘to be one of the Gunners belonging to his Ma.ties Guarrison of Annapolis Royall, you are therefore Carefully and Diligently to Discharge the Duty of a Gunner in the said service by doing performing all manner of things thereunto belonging...

    £950

  18. MARTINENQ, Jean Baptiste Thomas.

    Codex medicamentarius, seu pharmacopoea Parisiensis, ex mandato facultatis medicinae Parisiensis...

    Paris, apud Guillelmum Cavelier, 1748.

    Revised and enlarged edition (first 1638) of the Parisian pharmacopoeia, edited by the dean of the faculty of medicine at the University of Paris, Jean Baptiste Thomas Martinenq (d. 1758), this copy greatly enhanced by extensive critical and analytical marginalia by an experienced near contemporary...

    £2500

  19. 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

  20. McWILLIAM, James Ormiston.

    Medical History of the Expedition to the Niger during the Years 1841-2. Comprising an Account of the...

    London: C. Adlard for John Churchill, 1843.

    First edition. A classic treatise on the Niger region and the yellow fever written by the Scottish doctor James Ormiston McWilliam, the hero of a government expedition exploring the region and its commercial opportunities, and explicitly aimed at suppressing the slave trade. When the yellow fever...

    £600