Institutionum medicarum. Libri quinque

Venice: apud Franciscum Brogiollum, 1674. Hardcover. Very Good. Folio, book 5 only (325 x 220mm). [12], 159pp., [9], 443pp., [21]. Engraved woodcut printer’s device depicting Europa. Title printed in red and black. Tables. Double column. Some woodcut ornamental head- and tailpieces and initials. Later half vellum over marbled boards, endpapers renewed (light browning and foxing or dampstaining). Pictorial wood-engraved ex-libris by Leo Wyatt for Lord Norwich on pastedown.

Rivière’s extensive compendium of medicine. There was a parallell edition of Rivière’s Opera medica universa printed in Frankfurt of this same year (Sumptibus Joannis Petri Zubrodt). This volume is book five in his extensive compendium of medicine with sections on physiology, pathology, semiotics, preservation of health, and therapeutics. Subjects dealt with include cancer, haemorrhaging, the amount of food required by a healthy individual, the diagnostic significance of bloodshot eyes, and the medical properties of various fruits, nuts and vegetables. Rivière (1589-1665), professor at Montpellier, was the first to introduce the Paracelsian iatro-chemistry, or the internal use of metallic compounds, to Montpellier, and the first to note aortic stenosis.