Corpus iuris medicinalis in tres libros divisum, quo medicus naturæ accusantis, et morbi accusati

Venice: Antonio Bosio, 1679. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. Engraved frontispiece. Contemporary binder’s boards, manuscript spine title. In excellent condition, preserved in a folding clamshell box. Only edition of this pathological treatise on mental illness masquerading as a law book. The text describes the history, symptoms, prognosis, and treatment of epilepsy, paralysis, apoplexy, lethargy, phrenitis, melancholy, and mania. The final chapter briefly covers lycanthropy, or werewolf delusion. Each chapter includes pharmaceutical recipes and instructions for administration. The author intended to write two more volumes of the text, which may have constituted the legal part of the text suggested by the title, but he never completed them. This is the only published part.

Joseph Schiffmann was a Swiss physician who worked in Venice at the end of the seventeenth century.

OCLC records just 1 copy in America (NLM); Krivatsy 10478.