Regolamento dei regi spedali di Santa Maria Nuova e di Bonifazio

Florence: Gaetano Cambiagi, 1789. FIRST EDITION. Engraved frontispiece, 2 folding, 4 full-page, and 22 double-page typographic tables, 10 folding engraved plates. Contemporary stiff vellum, edges marbled blue and red, old bookseller label on the pastedown. In excellent condition. First edition of this groundbreaking guide to psychiatric institutional reform. The text lists the rules and regulations for the recently established Florentine Saint Bonifacio Hospital for the mentally ill as well as the reformed Santa Maria Novella, both of which reflected the new standards of care put in place by Vincenzo Chiarugi at the direction of Emperor Leopold II. These statutes demanded detailed patient records, hygienic conditions, and padded rooms and furniture, and they restricted use of force on patients. Chiarugi’s “humane administration with regard to the insane marked the first application of the principles of treatment that form the basis of modern psychiatry” (Norman).

Included at the end are dozens of blank forms that the hospitals used to consolidate patient information and tables showing the quantitative efficacy of the system. The plates show the hospitals’ grounds and facilities.

Norman 474; Garrison-Morton 4920.2.