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. BOTTO, Giuseppe Domenico.

    Observations microscopiques sur les mouvements des globules végétaux suspendus dans un menstrue.

    [Turin], Imprimerie Royale, [1840].

    An extremely rare offprint from the Memorie della Reale Accademia delle Scienze di Torino on Brownian Movement and a contribution to the ‘heated controversy with the best known botanists of the world [started by the] discovery that made [Amici] famous ... that of the fertilization of phanerogams, particularly...

    £675

  2. BOUTROLLE, J.G.

    Le parfait bouvier, ou instruction concernant la connoissance des boeufs & vaches, leur âge, maladies & symptômes,...

    Rouen, the widow Besongne and J.J. Besongne the younger, [1766?].

    Early (first?) edition of one of the most successful French veterinary guides. With the majority of early veterinary literature focused on the most highly prized animal, the horse, the present text is one of the few to address primarily the care of bovines, with sections also on pigs, sheep, and...

    £225

  3. [BRACKEN, Henry (attributed).]

    Ten Minutes Advice to every Gentleman going to purchase a Horse out of a Dealer, Jockey,...

    London, for the author and sold by John Bell, and York, C. Etherington, [c. 1775].

    Very rare second edition of advice on the purchase of horses, with the tricks used by dealers to deceive buyers. Though the text is commonly attributed to Bracken, he is unlikely to have published anything a decade after his death; the author’s preface, signed ‘S.’, may offer a more productive...

    £2500

  4. BROWN, Thomas.

    A Manual of modern Farriery, embracing the Cure of Diseases incidental to Horses, Cattle, Sheep, Swine, and Dogs,...

    London, James S. Virtue, [c. 1850?].

    First edition of this farriery manual, likely revised from Brown’s less extensive work The complete modern Farrier (Dingley 113). After entering the Royal Veterinary College in 1846, Thomas Brown (1827–1906) rose quickly, being appointed Professor of Veterinary Science at the Royal...

    £150

  5. BUCKNILL, Charles.

    Notes from medical lectures.

    London, February – April 1798.

    A most interesting medical manuscript by one Charles Bucknill recording lectures given in 1798 by the Scottish anatomist Matthew Baillie (1761–1823) and the English obstetrician John Clarke (1758–1815). Bucknill – likely a forebear of the psychiatrist and mental health reformer Sir John...

    £4500

  6. [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

  7. [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

  8. [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

  9. [CAVALRY.]

    Cours d’équitation militaire, a l’usage des corps de troupes a cheval, approuvé par s. exc. le ministre de la guerre.

    Saumur, H. Fournier for A. Degouy and Névo-Degouy, and Paris, Anselin, 1830.

    First edition of an encyclopædic work on horsemanship for the use of the French cavalry, with the suite of plates. ‘L’ouvrage est en effet une veritable encyclopédie hippique : hippologie, extérieur, emploi à la selle, au trait et au bat, alimentation, hygiène, maladies et accidens, haras...

    £225

  10. [CERVINI, Michael Antonio.]

    ‘Methodus medendi medicine partem complectens’, ‘Appendix de preiudiciis evitandis in methodo’;...

    Turin, July-August 1714.

    A substantial and highly interesting manuscript compendium, apparently unpublished, compiled by a medical student in Turin, in northern Italy, by the name of Michael Antonio Cervini, including numerous medical receipts and a treatise on surgery.

    £2500

  11. [CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.] 

    Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...

    Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695. 

    Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’. 

    £275

  12. [CHOLERA.]

    Istruzioni e regolamenti di privata sanitaria quarantina da osservarsi in caso di contagio per tenere lontano dalle...

    Milan, Angelo Bonfanti, 1831.

    First edition of an uncommon guide, printed in Milan at the height of the 1831-2 cholera pandemic, on preventive measures to be taken against contagion, and in particular on the maintenance of quarantine as a means of limiting the spread both of cholera and of other diseases.

    £250

  13. [CHOLERA.]

    Unterricht über die Erkenntniß, die erste Behandlung und die Verhütung der epidemischen Cholera für Nichtärzte....

    Lemgo, in der Meyerischen Hof-Buchdruckerey, 1831.

    Very rare, seemingly unrecorded, guide for lay people to the identification, initial treatment, and prevention of cholera, published at the height of the European pandemic of 1831-2 in the Westfalia town of Lemgo. The five sections deal with the diagnosis and symptoms of the disease, its treatment,...

    £250

  14. CHOPPIN, Henri.

    La cavalerie française … illustrée de nombreux dessins et de 16 gravures hors texte en couleurs.

    Paris, Garnier brothers, 1893.

    First edition of a well illustrated history of the French cavalry. A cavalry captain, Henri Choppin (1831–1916) published widely on the French military: the first of several works devoted to the cavalry, La cavalerie française is handsomely illustrated throughout and accompanied by sixteen...

    £175

  15. CHOYSELAT, Prudent le.

    Discours oeconomique, non moins utile que récréatif, monstrant comme de cinq cens livres pour une foys...

    Rouen, Martin le Menestrier 1612 [but ca. 1745].

    Early edition of an interesting ‘way to wealth’, in fact a guide to the management of poultry, first published 1569. An English translation was published in 1580 under the title A Discourse of housebandrie, described by Mary Aslin (Rothansted) as ‘the first book on poultry’. Brunet, Quérard...

    £550

  16. CIUCCI, Antonio Filippo.

    Promptuarium Chirurgicum in quo agitur de Morbis, qui indigent manuali Operatione Artis Chirurgiae.

    Macerata, Joseph Piccinus, 1679–1680.

    First edition, very rare, of this handbook of practical surgery, by the author of the first treatise of forensic medicine written in Italian.

    £2850

  17. 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

  18. 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

  19. [CORFU.]

    Notificazione. Uffizio della segreteria del governo. Corfu, 7 Maggio 1816 …

    Corfu, ‘en te typographia tes dioikeseos’, [1816].

    A seemingly unrecorded bilingual broadside, in parallel Italian and Greek, reporting on cases of plague in the district of Leftimo on the island of Corfu, issued during the British protectorate in May 1816 and printed in the capital at the government press.

    £375

  20. 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