pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

Woodcut printer’s device on title, woodcut initials and headpieces, full
page woodcut on †10 verso (recto blank).
122 x 51mm. Titlepage dustsoiled; woodcut cut close but image not
touched.
Binding: Nineteenth­century English polished calf.
Provenance: E. N. da C. Andrade with his bookplate; note in Walter
Pagel’s hand on endleaf.
Later edition (Wrst edition, Ars ... de staticas medicina, Venice 1614);
revised and enlarged as De medicina statica libri octo, Venice 1615, on
which the later editions are based. Krivatsy 10237.
This neatly produced edition of Santorio’s aphorisms is the Wrst to contain the
famous image of the author in a weighing chair with a table in front of him set
with food and wine. This was how he used to measure his own daily variation
in weight under diVerent conditions and to calculate the weight of invisible
excretions, which he found to be greater than all forms of visible excretions
combined. The ‘Aphorisms’ brieXy describes the results of the experiments
with the weighing chair and other instruments. InXuenced by Galileo, Santorio
‘opened the way to a mathematical and experimental analysis of physiological
and pathological phenomena’ (M. D. Grmek, DSB 12: 103–4).
167
SCHEuNEMANN, Henning (X. 1594–1613)
Hydromantia Paracelsica, hoc est, discursus philosophicus de novo
fonte in Saxonia electorali circa Oppidum Annebergam reperto, olim
S. Annaefons dicto.
Frankfurt: Prostant Francofurti in oYcina Zachariae Palthenii Doctoris,
1613 (1615).
4to: (:) 4 2(:) 2 A–O4 P2 (–P2) 63 of 64 leaves, pp. [12] 114. lacking
colophon leaf p2 dated 1615. Woodcut printer’s device on title,
woodcut of a still on p. 28.
183 x 148mm. Titlepage soiled, light browning and a few ink stains;
tear in last leaf repaired on verso.
Binding: Recent vellum boards covered with an antiphonal leaf
(probably northern France, Wfteenth century).
First edition. Krivatsy 10470; VD17 23:242100P.
A work on various methods of hydromancy, that is divination by observing
colours, ripples etc. in water. Scheunemann, a Rosicrucian, believed that he
had received Paracelsus’ principles by divine inspiration, though in his various
books in illustration of Paracelsus, he diverges from the master in several
respects (Ferguson ii, p. 334). Thorndike, the American historian, mentions
the present work but does not comment on it, the BM copy having been at
the binders when he tried to see it (Thorndike VII, p. 174, n. 100).
The publisher, Zacharias Palthenius (X. 1594–1614), was a physician and
editor of a number of medical works, though apparently not an author in his
own right.