CONTINENTAL BOOKS

TEACHING RHETORIC
3. BARTHOLIN, Caspar. Rhetorica, mandato sereniss.
Daniae, Norvvegiae etc. regis edita pro scholis cathedralibus et
collegiis. Strasbourg, Paul Ledertz, 1624.
[bound with:]
Idem. Oratoria, mandato sereniss. Daniae, Norvvegiae etc. regis,
edita pro scholis cathedralibus et collegiis. Strasbourg, Paul
Ledertz, 1624.
12mo, ff. [vi], 89, [1]; [ii], 126, [2]; engraved printer’s device to
titles, engraved initials; light damp staining to lower half
throughout, small wormhole to blank lower margin from f. 43 of
first work, touching a few letters; otherwise good copies in
contemporary dark brown calf, blind filleting to covers and spine,
three raised bands and remains of later paper label to spine, gilt
decoration to board edges, fragments from English printed text
used as endpapers, edges sprinkled red; some wear to covers and
extremities; book label of Bent Juel-Jensen.
£250
First editions of Bartholin’s manuals on rhetoric and oratory,
aimed at the school market. Having studied at Copenhagen,
Wittenberg, Leiden, Basel, Padua and Naples, Bartholin (1585-
1629) found fame with his 1611 anatomical manual Anatomicae
institutiones corporis humani. In addition to medicine, Bartholin
wrote and lectured prolifically on logic, physics, ethics, and
religion, gaining a reputation as an outstanding teacher. Small
wonder that he was commissioned by King Christian IV to produce
the Rhetorica, on tropes and figures, and Oratoria, on the art of
oratory, for young students at cathedral schools and colleges.
Rare institutionally and in commerce: in the UK and US, COPAC
and Worldcat record copies at Cambridge University Library and
the University of Chicago only.
BARTHOLIN’S ANATOMY
4. BARTHOLIN, Thomas. Historiarum anatomicarum rariorum centuria I
et II. Amsterdam, apud Ioannem Henrici, 1654.
8vo, pp. [xvi], 326, [10, index], with 9 engraved plates (some folded); engraved
title-page with portrait of author, engraved initials, some woodcut illustrations
within text; very small loss to title fore-edge, a few small marks, occasional very
light marginal damp staining; otherwise a very good copy in 18th-century stiff
vellum, title inked to spine; fore-edges and lower edge of upper cover worn,
slightly stained; book label of Bent Juel-Jensen.
£700
The first Amsterdam edition of the first
two parts of Bartholin’s Centuria (also
published at Copenhagen and The
Hague in the same year), from the
library of the Danish physician and
book collector Bent Juel-Jensen. The
Bartholin family made many
outstanding contributions to Danish
medicine in the seventeenth century.
Thomas (1616-80), who held chairs of
mathematics and anatomy at
Copenhagen, is famous for first
describing the human thoracic duct and
for his discovery of the human
lymphatic system. His Centuria
comprise ‘descriptions and illustrations
of anatomical anomalies and normal
structures, together with some brief case
histories of unusual anatomical and
clinical structures’ (Heirs of
Hippocrates no. 512). Further parts
appeared in 1657 and 1661.
Wellcome II p. 107.