«Merge Record #»«Title» - Susanne Schulz-Falster

Cork Life-Saving Suit
9.
BACHSTROM, Jean Frederic. L'Art de Nager, ou Invention à l'aide de laquelle on peut
toujours se sauver du Naufrage; &, en cas de besoin, fair passer les plus larges Rivières à
les Armées entières. Amsterdam, Zacharie Chatelain, 1741. $2000
8vo, pp. [iv] with engraved frontispiece and title page in red and black, pp. 70, [2] blank;
contemporary stiff paste-paper wrappers, spine a little worn and chipped, but holding firm.
First edition of Bachstrom's description of his invention of a life-jacket made out of cork.
Bachstrom begins with a brief account of earlier attempts at life-saving and in fact diving
equipment, before describing his own invention. He gives credit to a Dutchman who had
first introduced him to the idea, but had suggested another form of wood. Only after
experimenting with cork, which he then formed into some form of jacket, did he really
resolve the problem. He maintains that his was the first truly effective life saving
equipment in water, useful both for the individual, but also for whole armies. It could be
used both in cases of shipwreck, but also as a means of transporting whole armies across
rivers or inlays.
Interestingly he also identifies a business opportunity, by maintaining that insurance rates
for ships should go down when everyone on board is kitted out with a life-jacket.
The rather fetching cork jacket with trousers attached is illustrated on the engraved
frontispiece.
Bachstrom (1686-1742), a theologian and medical doctor, had a varied and restless career
in both theses fields.
ADB 55, pp. 664-667; Graesser I, 271; Harrington, A list of works on swimming, 4.
10.
BANDINI, Salustio Antonio. Discorso Economico scritto … nell'anno 1737. e
pubblicato nell'anno corrente 1775. Doppo la di lui morte seguita nel 1760. Firenze,
Gaetano Cambiagi, 1775. $6400
Small 4to, 209, [3] blank; entirely uncut in the original buff limp boards; a very fine and widemargined
copy.
First edition, very rare, of Bandini's remarkable and innovative economic reform
proposal, contained in his Discorso supra la Maremma Toscana of 1737, offered in manuscript
to the grand-duke Franics in 1739 and not published until 1775. When he investigated
the social and institutional causes of the depopulation of the Maremma region during the
last years of the Medici rule, Bandini proposed far-reaching structural reform, and
basically presented the leading principles of political economy. He was a political
visionary, advocating free trade, challenging price control, advocating simple fiscal
policies and thus anticipated economic debate by half a century.
He 'suggested that it was necessary to change economic policy radically. Restrictive
provisions, pressure of taxation, endless intervention by legal middlemen and useless
annona regulations were no good. These corner-stones of state intervention should be