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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.
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  1. 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

  2. DE NASCA, Giuseppe.

    Intorno all’uso del laudano concentrato del cav. Quadri per curare parecchie malattie degli occhi. Memoria...

    Naples, Giovanni Battista Seguim, 1828.

    Very rare tract on the use of concentrated laudanum in the treatment of various eye complaints by the Sicilian physician Giuseppe de Nasca (1803–1893).

    £550

  3. DEPARCIEUX, Antoine.

    Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine; d’où l’on déduit la manière de déterminer...

    Paris, chez les frères Guerin, 1746.

    A large, crisp and illustrious copy of the first edition of a classic of statistical science: it is the first to define expectation of life – which Deparcieux calls ‘la vie moyenne’ – and the first to contain life tables for men and women.

    £5500

  4. DESCARTES, René, and Louis de la FORGE (editor).

    Tractatus de homine, et de formatione foetus.

    Amsterdam, Daniel Elzevir, 1677.

    First and only Elzevir edition, and the first edition of the better Latin text of Descartes’s Traité de l’homme. De homine ‘is the first work in the history of science and medicine to construct a unified system of human physiology that presents man as a purely material and...

    £1100

  5. DIKREITER, Otto, and Renée SINTENIS (illustrator).

    Du und Dein Pferd: Ein anmutiges, belehrendes, und ergötzliches...

    Berlin, Königsberg, & Leipzig, Kanter Verlag, [c. 1938].

    First edition (seventh to tenth thousand) of a charmingly illustrated work. The collection of short pieces of poetry and prose relating to horses, gathered from sources ranging from Shakespeare and Goethe to Xenophon and the Koran, is illustrated by the German artist Renée Sintenis (1888–1965),...

    £80

  6. DUTROCHET, Henri. 

    Recherches sur l’endosmose et sur la cause physique de ce phénomène (Extrait des Annales de Chimie et de...

    [Paris, imprimerie de Veuve Thuau, 1832.] 

    An interesting article on endosmosis by the important French physiologist Henri Dutrochet (1776–1847), renowned for his work on osmosis and cell theory.  ‘Although the conditions of Dutrochet’s experiments were rather simple and did not allow of great accuracy, he made the first important...

    £175

  7. 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

  8. 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

  9. EMSWORTH, D.

    Le cheval & le chien.

    Brussels, widow Parent & Son, and Paris, Charles Tanera, 1865.

    Very rare French treatise on horses and dogs. The majority of the work is devoted to horses, discussing their breeds, diseases, training, and racing, with a chapter on the Rarey method.

    £375

  10. 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

  11. [FIRST AID – RAILWAYS.] 

    Ministère des chemins de fer, postes et télégraphes. Administration des chemins de fer de l’état. Manuel...

    Gand, F.& R. Buyck Frères, 1912. 

    First separate edition, as far as we are aware with no institutional holdings, of this guide to first aid in a railway context, published by the state railway administration of Belgium. 

    £195

  12. 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

  13. FREUD, Sigmund.

    Die Zukunft einer Illusion.

    Leipzig/Vienna/Zürich, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927.

    First edition, in the first issue of 5000 copies, of Freud’s work on the origins and future development of religion (the ‘illusion’ of the title), centred on the notion of religion as, in one form or another, wish-fulfilment and the longing for a paternal figure as a response to a realisation...

    £85

  14. 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

  15. GARSAULT, François-Alexandre de.

    Le nouveau parfait maréchal, ou la connoissance générale et universelle du cheval, divisé...

    Paris, Moreau for Hochereau, 1770.

    Fourth edition of one of the most popular French horsemanship manuals. First published in 1741 as a successor to Solleysel’s famous Parfait maréchal and reprinted in at least sixteen editions over the following century, Le nouveau parfait maréchal ‘is considered to be the best...

    £650

  16. GAYOT DE PITAVAL (Conseil).

    Question d’estat: fille reclamée par deux meres.

    Paris, Nicolas le Gras, 1716.

    First edition of this account by the famous advocate François Gayot de Pitaval (1673–1743) of a 1709 case, where a midwife had substituted a new-born girl who was then claimed both by the real mother and the woman to whom the baby had been given. Pitaval’s account details the principles by...

    £350

  17. GIBELLI, Giacinto. 

    Due dissertazioni sopra li vantaggi, che si ottengono in medicina dall’uso del ferro per guarire molte infermità,...

    Genoa, Paolo Scionico, 1767. 

    First and only edition, rare, of these treatises on the medicinal benefits of iron supplements, with accounts of their use by the author in curing over 450 patients of maladies ranging from anorexia to melancholy. 

    £600

  18. GIOVANNI BATTISTA DA NAPOLI. 

    Opera et trattato, che insegna molti dignissimi secreti contra la peste, con li quali subito si...

    [Venice, 1556?] 

    Rare second revised edition (first 1527) of this work offering advice against the plague by the Augustinian friar Giovanni Battista, interleaved and annotated with unpublished Latin notes on the subject. 

    £2750

  19. [GRANT, Charles, Vicomte de Vaux.]

    Recueil d’Essais, ou précis des opinions, et des mémoires, du Vte de *** …

    A Londres: De l’Imprimerie de T. Spilsbury & Fils. 1793.

    An interesting tract volume, containing the scarce collected thoughts of Charles Grant, vicomte de Vaux (a subscriber’s copy), a fine illustrated guide to Nîmes and the Pont du Gard, and three pamphlets relating to a controversy in the medical faculty in Edinburgh.

    £1500

  20. GRIFFITHS, William, and Henry BUNBURY (illustrator).

    A practical Treatise on Farriery, deduced from the Experience...

    Wrexham, R. Marsh, [1784].

    First edition of this informative treatise by the groom to the Williams Wynn family, from the library of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn’s political ally, William Mostyn Owen. A farrier to the Williams Wynns of Wynnstay since at least the 1740s, Griffiths dedicates the work to his second master from...

    £1100