Opera medica Omnia ... Accedunt Fabritii Bartholeti ... de dyspnoea, seu de respirationibus libri quinque

Venice: ex Typographia Balleoniana, 1735. Hardcover. Very Good. Folio (375 x 240mm). [xxiv], 572pp., [4], 208pp. Title in red and black with ornamental device of the muses. Diagrams interspersed, numerous ornamental initials and head-and tail-pieces. Preface by Jacopo Grando. Contemporary vellum (lacking plate, joints splitting, intermittent foxing). Ownership inscription “A. Docinelli A. M. D. 1864” on title and also “Di Giorgio Bonelli da Mondovi. P.P.” Pictorial wood-engraved ex-libris by Leo Wyatt for Lord Norwich on pastedown.

Complete medical works of Rivière. The complete medical works of Lazare Rivière (1589-1655), professor at Montpellier, consists of the Institutiones medicae, together with the Praxeos medicae, and an additional 17 parts on the head, the sense organs, the teeth, the thorax and abdomen, the joints, women’s illnesses and fevers. Also included are 400 observations by the author, approximately 250 communicated to him by fellow physicians, and finally, the Arcana, a collection of secrets giving the chemical formulae for a large number of preparations together with their medicinal properties. At the end, separately paginated, is added a treatise on the symptoms, cause and cure of respiratory problems by Fabrizio Bartoletti (1586-1630). Rivière was the first to introduce the therapy of using metallic compounds internally, known as the spagiric or paracelsian-specific method, and the first to note aortic constriction. Rivière’s work was instrumental in the French Renaissance of medicine.