De Secretis Mulierum. Item De Virtutibus Herbarum Lapidum et Animalium [with Secreta Naturae] / Albertus Magnus' Secrets of Women and Natural Magic, on the Virtues of Herbs, Stones and Animals

Amsterdam [Amstelodami]: Johannes Janssonius [Apud Iodocum Ianssonium], 1643. [Later Edition]. Full Vellum. Very Good+. [Later Edition]. Full Vellum. (On the secrets of women), an immensely popular work which was published many times during the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, sometimes separately and sometimes in compilations such as this, which also contains "De mirabilibus mundi" as well as, "De secretis naturae" by Michael Scotus [Contiene: Michaelis Scoti, Rerum naturalium perscrutatoris prooemium, in secreta naturae]. The works attributed to Albertus Magnus were not written by him, but by followers who drew (sometimes faultily) from his work. Suggested authors have been Thomas of Brabant and Henry of Saxony, but they have since been ruled out.
"Michaëlis Scoti rerum naturalium perscrutatoris procemium, in secreta naturae": p. 224-366.
The 1643 Amsterdam edition of the "misogynist masterpiece" The Secrets of Women, an influential and widely disseminated work of natural philosophy that laid the intellectual foundations for early modern witch persecutions (Cabre, review of Women's Secrets in ISIS volume 85, no 3, 1994). The publisher of this edition was Johannes Janssonius (1588-1664), Willem Blaeu's main rival in map publishing, and it includes an engraved title depicting the mythological figure Callisto, in labour and appealing to the goddess Artemis.
Long attributed to Albertus Magnus, De Secretis was probably composed by one of his followers during the late 13th or early 14th century, and survives in around 83 manuscript copies, of which 50 were printed in the 15th century and over 70 in the 16th (Lemay, Women's Secrets. A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus's De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries, p. 1). Though the contents cover what we would now consider obstetrics and gynaecology, including menstruation, spermatogenesis, conception, fetal development, and infertility, the text is not a practical medical manual but a philosophical exploration of the human body and its relation to the cosmos. As a follower of Albertus Magnus, the treatise's author "believed that the study of nature as perceived through sense experience and then analyzed in a rational manner forms a single discipline through which we come to comprehend the universe in its corporeal aspects. Human reproduction, a main subject of this treatise, is one of these aspects, that nevertheless has repercussions for our understanding of the entire cosmos" (Lemay, p. 3). De Secretis was most likely "designed to be used within a religious community as a vehicle for instructing priests in natural philosophy, particularly as it pertains to human generation... A strong subtext of the Secrets, however, is the evil nature of women and the harm they can cause to their innocent victims: young children and their male consorts. Clearly then, another purpose of this treatise is to malign the female sex, a tradition that extends back in Christianity to second-century misogynist writings" (Lemay, p. 16). Among the concepts that the text popularized were the idea that women's menstrual blood was poisonous, that post-menopausal women (especially those who were poor) were more "venomous" because they could no longer expel the toxins, and that women were inherently lascivious beings with a physiological need to absorb the heat and life force of men. "It is these misogynistic ideas about women's sexuality that seeded their demonization in the years that followed, as the Secrets served as a direct source for the Malleus maleficarum. Indeed, the most famous statement from the Malleus explicitly connects witchery with ideas about women's sexuality rooted in the medieval period: 'All witchcraft comes from carnal lust, which is in women insatiable'" (McLemore, "Medieval Sexuality, Medical Misogyny, and the Makings of the Modern Witch", blog of the University of Notre Dame's Medieval Studies Institute, October 30, 2020).--AlemicBooks. Originally written in Latin, the title translates as The Secrets of Women or Of the Secrets of Women. Drawing on Hippocratic, Galenic, and Aristotelian theories, this text discusses sexuality and reproduction from both a medical and philosophical perspective. Over eighty manuscript copies of the treatise have been identified, and it has been translated into multiple different languages over several centuries. This suggests that the ideas expressed in this work were hugely popular and influential. It was added to the banned book list by the Catholic Church, Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1605. [6 US holdings, OCLC]. See "Secreta mulierum" Wiki. Chipping, toning, mild shelf/edge wear, staining, light foxing throughout, previous owner inscriptions to front and rear pastedowns. else tight, bright, and unmarred. Full contemporary vellum, beveled edge, previous owner inscriptions to front and rear pastedowns, handwritten spine title, engraved allegorical frontispiece. 12mo. 366, [10]pp. Illus. (b/w, frontis). Contiene: Michaelis Scoti, Rerum naturalium perscrutatoris prooemium, in secreta naturae. Segn.: A-P¹²-Q.