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’.

    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

  2. GABARO, Antonio. 

    Alla pregiatissima Signora Domenica Schiavon Menato nella fausta occasione del suo primo parto, in argomento...

    Padua, ‘Nella Tipografia del Seminario’, 1820. 

    First and only edition, very rare, of a scathing and sexist condemnation of ‘inhuman’ women who do not breastfeed their own children, dedicated to Domenica Schiavon Menato, ‘an example to all women’, on the occasion of the birth of her first child. 

    £380

  3. 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

  4. [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

  5. RUINI, Carlo.

    Anatomia del cavallo, infermità, et suoi rimedii: opera nuova, degna di qualsivoglia prencipe, & cavaliere, & molto...

    Venice, Fioravante Prati, 1618.

    Fourth edition of the first detailed study in veterinary anatomy and an extremely important work in the history of anatomy as a discipline.

    £6000

  6. BINGLEY, William.

    Animal Biography, or authentic Anecdotes of the Lives, Manners, and Economy of the animal Creation, arranged...

    London, R. Taylor & Co. for Richard Phillips, 1805.

    Third edition of Bingley’s most popular zoological work. First published in 1802, the Animal Biography provides accounts of the form and behaviour of a wide variety of mammals, birds, fish, and insects.

    £175

  7. FRANZ, Wolfgang.

    Animalium historia sacra, in qua plerorumque animalium praecipuae proprietates in gratiam studiosorum theologiae...

    Amsterdam, Jan Jansson, 1643.

    First Jansson edition (fifth overall). First published in Wittenberg in 1612, the Animalium historia sacra is the most successful work of the Lutheran theologian Wolfgang Franz (1564 – 1628), providing a careful study of the creatures appearing in the Bible, both real and mythical.

    £75

  8. 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

  9. [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

  10. [PHARMACOPOEIA.]

    Apparatus medicaminum ad usum nosocomii Ticinensis anno MDCCXC.

    Pavia, Joseph Bolzani, [1790].

    Very rare first edition of this pharmacopoeia for use at the Ospedale Grande di San Matteo, also known as the Pietà, in Pavia, one of the foremost medical schools in Europe at the time of this publication. Founded in 1449, the Ospedale remained the centre of healthcare in the city for almost...

    £750

  11. EHRLICH, Paul.

    Autograph letter, signed, addressed to ‘herr hospitalmeister’.

    [Frankfurt,] ‘Westendstrasse 62’, [no date].

    A brief note by the bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915), pioneer of haematology and discoverer of salvarsan, to a local hospital director, regarding notes on the bulletin board.

    £750

  12. [ANATOMY.]

    ‘Breve compendio anatomico’.

    [Italy, c. 1720.]

    A handsome set of apparently unpublished notes on orthopaedics by an anonymous medical student, compiled in Italy in the early eighteenth century, covering bones, cartilage, ligaments and muscles. The manuscript opens with a detailed analysis of the human skeleton, its bones and articulation,...

    £1750

  13. EYRE, Henry.

    A Brief Account of the Holt Waters, containing one Hundred and Twelve eminent Cures, perform’d by the Use of the...

    London: Printed for J. Roberts … 1731.

    First edition. The waters from Bath, Bristol and Holt, in Wiltshire, were the most popular English mineral waters of the eighteenth century, in no small part due to the activity of Henry Eyre, ‘Sworn Purveyor to Her Majesty [Queen Caroline, wife of George II] for all Mineral Waters’. Eyre ran a distribution...

    £750

  14. OSBALDISTON, William Augustus.

    The British Sportsman, or Nobleman, Gentleman, and Farmer’s Dictionary of Recreation and Amusement,...

    London, J. Stead for the Proprietor, and sold by Champante & Whitrow and at the British Directory Office, [c. 1792-6].

    First edition, issued in forty-two parts, of one of the first sporting dictionaries. ‘The pleasure and convenience of being well informed in the Recreations and Amusements of a Country Life, are objects of themselves sufficiently interesting, to justify the Author in presenting this Work to...

    £650

  15. AUGIER DU FOT, Anne Amable.

    Catechismo d’ostetricia per istruzione delle mammane di campagna composto per odine e a spese del...

    Venice, Stamperia Graziosi, 1787.

    Uncommon first Italian edition of this handbook of obstetrics, initially published in France at the behest of Turgot in 1775 and distributed gratis to French midwives.

    £550

  16. MARKHAM, Gervase.

    Cavalarice, or the English Horseman: Contayning all the Art of Horse-manship, asmuch as is necessary for any...

    London, Edward Allde for Edward White, [1616–] 1617.

    A beautiful copy of the second edition, ‘corrected and augmented’, of Markham’s Cavalarice, exceptionally well-preserved in a contemporary binding, from the library of the antiquary Sir John Marsham.

    £12000

  17. [APPERLEY, Charles James.] ‘NIMROD’, and Henry ALKEN (illustrator).

    The Chace, the Turf, and the Road.

    London, A. Spottiswoode for John Murray, 1837.

    First edition of a series of articles first published in the Quarterly Review, illustrated by Henry Alken. A sporting writer who ‘may even be said to have created the role of gentleman hunting correspondent’ (ODNB), Charles James Apperley (1778–1843) published widely on hunting and...

    £350

  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. ÉCOLE 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 decade of the nineteenth century.

    £1750

  20. [VENEREAL DISEASE.] 

    A collection of theses on syphilis and gonorrhea. 

    Paris, 1829-1860. 

    An interesting collection of fifteen scarce theses presented for the degree of Doctor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medecine in Paris, between 1829 and 1860, on the subject of syphilis, gonorrhea, and other sexually transmitted infections. 

    £550