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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. SCHRÖDINGER, Erwin, et al.

    A collection of offprints and papers from the library of Nándor Balázs.

    1902–1961.

    A remarkable collection of offprints and papers from the library of Hungarian-American physicist Nándor Balázs, laboratory assistant in the early 1950s to the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, comprising an exceptionally strong core of Schrödinger’s works – many of...

    £50000

  2. SECHENOV, Ivan Mikhaylovich.

    Fisiologia nervnoy sistemy [in Cyrillic].

    St. Petersburg, 1866.

    first edition, rare, of Sechenov’s influential lectures at the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy. Sechenov states in his preface that as soon as he began to lecture (St. Petersburg in 1860 was his first professorship) he discovered the deficiencies of the existing textbooks, which tended to be...

    £2750

  3. SIMON, John, Sir.

    A volume of autograph letters received by Sir John Simon from medical friends and acquaintances.

    Circa 1848-1887.

    An interesting collection of letters to Sir John Simon and Lady Simon, from many of the leading physicians and surgeons of the Victorian era. Sir John Simon (1816–1904) was a renowned surgeon, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, and an efficient and dynamic reformer of public health...

    £1250

  4. SMITH, Robert. 

    The Universal Directory for taking alive and destroying Rats, and all other Kinds of four-footed and winged Vermin,...

    London, printed for the author, 1768. 

    First edition of a guide to catching and killing all manner of crawling and flying vermin, illustrated with plates, by the professional exterminator and rat-catcher Robert Smith. 

    £500

  5. SQUIRES, Richard F.

    Typescript letter to John Derek Smith, signed Rick,

    dated Gladsaxe [Denmark], December 7, 1965.

    Squires’ main research was into multiple forms of monoamine oxidases, and their inhibitors, which are nowadays used as antidepressants. Squires reports of problems not entirely unrelated with psycho-active substances:

    £180

  6. STABLES, Gordon.

    Hints about home and farm favourites for pleasure, prizes, and profit.

    London and New York, Frederick Warne, 1889.

    First edition of this charming work on the care of pets, with chapters on dogs, cats, poultry, rabbits, goats, ferrets, monkeys, guinea-pigs, ‘fancy rats’, and tortoises, as well as on ‘monkeys as pets’. The book is dedicated to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

    £250

  7. STANYHURST, William.

    Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.

    Antwerp, Cornelius Woons, 1661.

    First edition, rare, of this work on death, the Last Judgement, Hell, and Heaven, by the Irish Jesuit William Stanyhurst (1601–1663), illustrated with five striking full-page emblematic engravings.

    £875

  8. STATUTA COLLEGII DD.

    Almae Urbis Medicorum ex antiquis Romanorum Pontificum bullis congesta, & hactenùs per Sedem Apostolicam...

    Rome, Printer of the Apostolic Chamber, 1676 [– c.1745].

    The very rare enlarged and updated issue of the statutes of the medical faculty of Rome, a very rare and interesting document on its internal organization.

    £550

  9. STENUIT, Alfred, and G. de VOGHEL.

    Manuel de sauvetage dans les mines. Notions théoriques sur les accidents et le sauvetage....

    Tamines, Duculot-Roulin, 1909.

    Only edition of this attractively illustrated and very rare guide to life-saving in mines, by the Belgian mining engineers Stenuit and de Voghel. Divided into three parts, the book opens with explanations of the possible hazards, ranging from asphyxiation to explosions and underground fires, as...

    £350

  10. STEWART, John; A. B. ALLEN, editor.

    Stable Economy: A Treatise on the Management of Horses, in Relation to Stabling, Grooming,...

    New York, D. Appleton & Co., and Philadelphia, George S. Appleton, 1845.

    First American edition of Stewart’s treatise. ‘It may be thought, perhaps, by some, presumptuous on the part of any American, to undertake the editing with a view of improvement, of a work of the standard reputation of Stewart’s Stable Economy. But it must be recollected that the climate...

    £175

  11. STIRLING, A.M.W.

    Ghosts vivisected. An impartial inquiry into their manners, habits, mentality, motives and physical construction....

    London, Robert Hale, 1957.

    First edition, a very readable account of otherworldly encounters, with illustrations by the Symbolist painter Evelyn de Morgan, the author’s elder sister.

    £40

  12. STRICKLAND, Hugh Edwin, and A. 

    G. MELVILLE. The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo,...

    London, Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1848.

    An extra-illustrated family copy of the first scientific monograph on the dodo, and a related flightless bird, the Rodrigues solitaire, with the bookplates of the author and his father and a frontispiece by the author’s wife.

    £7500

  13. SURTEES, Robert Smith.

    The Horseman’s Manual, being a Treatise on Soundness, the Law of Warranty, and generally on the Laws relating...

    London, M.A. Pittman for Alfred Miller, 1831.

    First edition of Surtees’s first work, the only publication to bear his name, from the family of the dedicatee. Though best known for his sporting articles and novels, Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) was, alongside his landed interests, a respected jurist in County Durham, serving as justice...

    £1250

  14. SWOBODA, Hermann.

    Die Perioden des menschlichen Organismus: in ihrer psychologischen und biologischen Bedeutung.

    Leipzig, Deuticke, 1904.

    First editions, all rare, the first two being foundational works in the formation of the theory of biorhythm. Swoboda’s early studies on the recurrence or periodicity in phenomena acquired a psychological character and application in his work since his encounter and brief experience of analysis with...

    £200

  15. [SYPHILIS.]

    Della tabe dorsale ovvero della cura della consunzione negli uomini e nelle donne con la spiegazione de’ sintomi,...

    Venice, Graziosi, 1785.

    First Italian translation, uncommon, of Tabes dorsalis: or, the cause of consumption in young men and women, by ‘a Physician of Bristol’.

    £135

  16. [TACCONI, Gaetano.]

    ‘Medicae inst[ructio]nes’, ‘Tractatus de febribus’, and ‘Compendiosa nonulloru[m] m[or]boru[m] peculiariu[m]...

    [Bologna, Italy,] 1739.

    An extensive manuscript compendium of apparently unpublished medical texts compiled by a student at the Archiginnasio of Bologna who studied under Gaetano Tacconi (1689–1782), comprising notes on the prescription and preparation of medication, on fevers, and on a wide variety of illnesses. The...

    £1250

  17. TALIANI, Giuseppe. 

    Orologi riflessi, per mezo di un picciolo specchio parallelo o perpendicolare all’orizonte. 

    Macerata, Filippo Camacci, 1648. 

    Only recorded edition, rare, of this work by mathematician Taliani on the construction of sundials in the interior of buildings, to be achieved through mirrors reflecting solar rays – our copy uniquely furnished with a contemporary large hand-drawn representation of the face of a sundial. ...

    £950

  18. TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.

    Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]

    First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.

    £6750

  19. THOMPSON, J.

    Modern Practice of Farriery, or complete Horse Doctor, explaining the various Symptoms of the approaching Disorders...

    Philadelphia, Joseph Crukshank, 1807.

    First Philadelphia (second American) edition. Penned by a Yorkshire farrier from Clifton, the Complete Horse Doctor first assumed the title of the ‘Modern Practice of Farriery’ for the New York edition of 1793, despite having been in circulation in Britain since 1760.

    £250

  20. TISSOT, Samuel August André David.

    Traité de l'épilepsie ...

    Paris, P.F. Didot, 1770.

    The scarce first edition of Tissot’s important monograph on epilepsy, the “first book on this subject to show all the characteristics of Enlightenment in medicine. Written in the French vernacular, it is at once learned, scientific, and readable...” (Temkin, The Falling Sickness p. 229).

    £800