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.-
[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An extensive manuscript compendium of apparently unpublished medical texts compiled by a student at the Archiginnasio of Bologna who studied under Gaetano Tacconi (1689–1782), comprising notes on the prescription and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
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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
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TAYLOR, Alfred Swaine.
On the Processes for detecting Blood in medico-legal Cases.
[London, Guy’s Hospital Reports, 1870.]
Taylor’s own offprint of this interesting article on detecting blood ‘for the purposes of pathology and legal medicine’, in which he publishes, for the first time, a description of the spectroscopic process developed by the eminent microscopist and geologist Henry Clifton Sorby (1826–1908),...
£350
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THORNTON, Robert John, and Joseph DUFFOUR (translator).
Preuves de l’efficacité de la vaccine, suivies d’une...
Paris, Chomel, 1807.
First French translation of Thornton’s Facts decisive in favour of the cow-pock, which first appeared in 1802 and swiftly ran through numerous editions. Thornton (1768–1837) attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and the University of St Andrews, before lecturing on medical botany at Guy’s...
£200
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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
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WHITE, James.
A Compendium of the veterinary Art, containing an accurate Description of all the Diseases to which the Horse is...
London, J. Badcock and Longman & Co., and Canterbury, W. Bristow, [c. 1804].
Sixth edition. Evidently a successful text, further editions appeared soon after the work’s first publication and would eventually be expanded into four volumes (the present edition is often found accompanied by The materia medica and pharmacopoeia).
£225
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WOLFERSTAN, Stanford.
An Enquiry into the Causes of Diseases in General, and the Disturbances of the Humors in Man’s Body …...
London, Printed for Thomas Basset … 1692.
First and only edition, very rare, of a short medical work on blood, air, and poison by Stanford Wolferstan (b. 1652), youngest son of the noted book collector Frances Wolfreston (1607–1677).
£2850
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WOOD, John.
A new compendious Treatise of Farriery, wherein are set forth in a plain, familiar, and natural Manner the Disorders...
London, Hewett for the author, and sold by J. Brindley, T. Payne, and R. Withy & J. Ryall, 1757.
First edition of a treatise on farriery by John Wood, formerly groom to the King of Sardinia. The contemporary manuscript notes appear in several hands belonging to members of the Green family of Uppington in Shropshire, though the majority match inscriptions by Barnard and Jane Green. Several...
£650
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ZEVIANI, Giovanni Verardo.
Del flato a favore degl’ipocondriaci.
Verona, Antonio Andreoni, 1755.
Rare first edition of the first medical treatise on tympanites, a distention of the abdomen caused by the accumulation of gas in the gastro-intestinal tract, linking it with hypochondria and melancholy.
£650