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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. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger. 

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

    £875

  2. ARNALDUS DE VILLANOVA. 

    Computus ecclesiasticus et astronomicus ... noviter impressum. 

    Venice, Bernardino Vitali, 17 February 1501. 

    Rare first edition, the Erwin Tomash copy, with numerous early marginalia showing a close analysis by a near-contemporary reader. 

    £4500

  3. BERRYAT, Jean, et al., editors.

    Receuil de Mémoires, ou Collection de Pièces Académiques, concernant la Médicine, l’Anatomie...

    Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.

    The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...

    £6000

  4. BLANCHON, Jacques.

    Iacobi Blanchoni ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum beneventanum abbatem selestensem defensionum liber.

    Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1550.

    First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly-printed de Tournes edition. Ostensibly a simple series of remarks against the theses of the (presumably sternly Scholastic) abbot of Selestan, this is a tract of Renaissance moral philosophy. The theme of...

    £950

  5. CROWLEY, Aleister. 

    In Residence: The Don’s Guide to Cambridge. 

    Cambridge, Elijah Johnson, 1904. 

    First edition, uncut in publisher’s wrappers, of this amusingly eclectic collection of poems written by the occultist Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) while an undergraduate at Cambridge. 

    £275

  6. GASPARIN, Agénor Étienne, Comte de.

    Des tables tournantes du surnaturel en général et des esprits par le Cte Agénor de Gasparin.

    Paris, Bonaventure and Ducessois for E. Dentu, 1854.

    Scarce first edition of Gasparin’s early experiments in table-turning – a form of séance in which tables appear to rotate or levitate of their own accord – which would prove highly controversial and integral to the nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement.

    £1500

  7. [KRÜDENER, Barbara Juliane de Vietinghoff, Baronne de.]

    Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G… Tome...

    Paris, Henrichs, 1804.

    Rare first edition of Valérie, the most famous novel by the Russian mystic and novelist Madame de Krüdener (1766–1824), who for a time exerted an influence over Tsar Alexander I.

    £800

  8. KUNCKEL VON LÖWENSTERN, Johann.

    Collegium physico-chemicum experimentale, Oder Laboratorium Chymicum, In welchem Deutlich und...

    Hamburg and Leipzig, Samuel Heyl, 1716.

    the rare first edition of a famous chemical handbook, the most important work of the leading german chemist of the second half of the seventeenth century. Partington, devoting pp. 361-77 of vol. II to Kunckel, gives ‘a nearly complete bibliographical account with comment’ (Marie Boas Hall in DSB),...

    £4000

  9. 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

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. PASTEUR, Louis. 

    Études sur la bière, ses maladies, causes qui les provoquent, procédé pour la rendre inaltérable, avec une...

    Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1876.

    First edition.  In his Études sur la bière, Pasteur ‘described a new and perfected method of preparing pure yeast [and] emphasized that yeast occasionally required small quantities of oxygen in order to retain its “youth” and its capacity to germinate in oxygen-free environments. ...

    £750

  13. PASTEUR, Louis.

    Visiting card with autograph note.

    [No place, undated.]

    With the autograph note ‘Avec ses remerciments très empressés’. 45 rue d’Ulm was the address of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where Pasteur began his education and where he taught intermittently before being appointed director of scientific studies in 1856.

    £400

  14. REFELL, A. 

    Trugbilder: Eine Anleitung Erscheinungen, auf optischer Täuschung beruhend, nach Belieben hervorzuheben und wissenschaftliche...

    Stuttgart, Rieger, 1865. 

    First German edition, rare, of this fascinating study of mirages and optical illusions, in particular ghostly apparitions, in which the author attempts to demonstrate using the principles of optics how they might appear, with the aim of proving the absurdity of the superstitions to which they...

    £1250

  15. [ROSICRUCIANISM.]

    Fortalitium scientiae, das ist: die unfehlbare, volkommeliche, unerschätzliche Kunst aller Künsten und...

    [Nuremberg], 1617.

    First edition of this tract on Rosicrucianism which purports to have been written by Hugo de Alverda, an imaginary and very old Rosicrucian character.

    £2850

  16. 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

  17. [WALL, Thomas].

    A Second Christian Warning-Piece; wherein is shewed the first and chief Cause of Englands present Misery … Humbly...

    London, 1681-2.

    First edition, very rare, of a vehement anti-Catholic tract published in the context of the Exclusion Crisis; bound with the principal astrological work of John Holwell (a slightly imperfect copy).

    £1750