pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

The attack on Culpeper occupies four pages (B1–4, pp. 9–16) addressed
to ‘Friend Culpepr[sic]’ containing the often quoted insult that of the
Pharmacopoeia, ‘Culpeper hath made Cul­paper, paper Wt to wipe ones breech
withall’. This follows an only slightly less intemperate attack on ‘the Book
lately Published by one who stiles himselfe Noah Biggs, Helmontii Psittacum’,
i.e. Biggs, Mataeotechnia medicinae praxeos, dated 1651 on the titlepage and
probably published in March 1652.
Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (1965), pp. 66–69; Benjamin Woolley,
The herbalist. Nicholas Culpeper and the Wght for medical freedom (2004).
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FLuDD, Robert (1574–1637)
Clavis philosophiae et alchymiae Fluddanae. Sive Roberti Fluddi...
ad epistolicam Petri Gassendi Theologi Exercitationem Responsum.
Frankfurt: Prostant apud Guihelmum Fitzerum, 1633.
Folio: A–L4 , 44 leaves, pp. 87 [1] (last page blank). Large
engraved device on title, woodcut headpieces and initials.
295 x 193mm. Light browning.
Binding: Nineteenth­century sprinkled boards. Spine torn.
Bound after part of another work by Fludd, see below.
Provenance: Inscriptions on title of Wrst item in volume,
‘Ex bibliotheca D: Brix de Wakenbirggs. Archiat:
FürstendorV’ [transcription uncertain]; and, probably
later, ‘Anton v. Lancsz Zeibehyrung’ [transcription
uncertain]; owner’s monogram stamp ‘R. C.’ on
pastedown and ‘Collationné­complet’ with the same
initials in red ink.
First edition. Ferguson I, p. 283.
Clavis philosophiae is ‘a reply to the anatomical and physiological
arguments assembled by Gassendi against Fludd’s ideas on
the movement of the blood. The former still believed in the
percolation of the Wner – purer – part of the venous blood from
the right heart to the left across the septum. Fludd strenu ously
denied the existence of such interventricular communications
and ex plain ed Gassendi’s Wndings in terms of artefacts. Fludd
continues: “This inquiry was carried out many times with
great diligence by several of my colleagues and particularly by
Dr Harvey, most expert anatomist, as he himself put the
matter to the test exhaustively for his own sake – the circulation
of the blood; however, not in any of many cadavers examined
did he Wnd anything like this; neither did I nor others when
scrutinising the septum of the heart with sharp and lynx­like
eyes”.’ (Pagel, William Harvey’s Biological Ideas, p. 114.)
Note in Pagel’s hand; ‘p. 34 in the second work (Clavis)
on Harvey cc interventricular heart septum’; and on a slip