Venice: Francesco Rampazetto? 1526-1576.
A fascinating edict borne of a crime wave targeting the wine industry in the Veneto region of Italy in the 1520s. At the time, the law prohibited wine producers of the region from transporting their wine from their vineyards into Venice without an official stamp, or.....
Tübingen: J.G. Cotta’schen, 1799.
Marvelous pocket diary for horse lovers, illustrated with 13 etched and stippled-engraved plates of horses (one folding), plus two additional line-engraved plates. F.M.F. Bouvinghausen—equerry, chamberlain, major-general, and chief of the hussars in the regiment of the Duke of Württemberg—wrote a handful of veterinary treatises before 1790.....
London: Anon, 1787.
Second, expanded edition of Gabriel Feydel's first book, a curious essay on swimming. Divided into three sections—swimming in general, the basics of the art, and the establishment of a school for swimming enthusiasts—the Essai is rather defensive and proud in tone, and presages Feydel's work as a......
Venice: Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1548.
First Edition. Although the title of this collection indicates funeral orations for animals by "various authors," all eleven pieces are by Ortensio Lando (1505?-1555?), the eccentric, peripatetic, uncomfortable humanist who seemed to gravitate toward the far edge of every society he entered. While many.....
Paris: Jean-Augustin Grangé, 1775.
The present single-sheet advertisement promotes a chocolate bonbon supposedly laced with antivenereal drugs, an invention of the largely forgotten Paris apothecary Mr. Martin. The advertisement (and, by extension, the product), was approved by the somewhat less obscure Henri-Michel Missa, royal censor and doctor of the Faculty.....
Paris: Gabriel Martin, 1722.
Only edition of the auction catalogue of the library of Philippe de la Coste, Canon of Paris and Doctor of the Sorbonne. The sale, which began the 7th of January, 1723, largely comprised a remarkable variety of theological texts, but a good third of the offerings.....
Strasbourg: Remy Guedon, 1547.
In 1542, by order of the Strasbourg City Council, Johann Winter von Andernach, physician to François Ier and professor of anatomy at the Faculté de Medecine de Paris, composed his De victus ed medicinae ratione cum alio tum pestilentiae tempore observanda commentarius, a compact work on.....
Paris: Jules Gay, 1864.
Copy no. 161 of an edition of 260. First edition of the first substantive international bibliography of chess, a volume that lists not only the principle works of chess literature from every major chess-playing country of the world, but each nation or continent's leading chess clubs.....
Limoges? 1778.
One of several editions of a long list of testimonials, letters, certificats, and even hearsay attesting to the virtues of the so-called poudre d'Irroé, a purgative and laxative preparation invented by Monier, Baron de Taillades, an Avignon physician, with the assistance of Charles Irroé, a Catholic priest with.....
Strasbourg: Christan Egenolff the Elder, 1530.
First edition of perhaps the first manual on warfare written and published specifically in preparation for Reformation-related conflict. Jakob Preuss was chief military advisor to John Frederick I, later Elector of Saxony and incipient coleader of the highly ambitious Schmalkaldic League, a military alliance.....
![ALMANAC] ՕՐԱՑՈՅՑ [Calendar…for 1800] Istanbul: Madteas Dpri, 1799. ANON](/pictures/thumb/62.png?v=1604587905)
Istanbul: Madteas Dpri, 1799.
A charming pocket calendar and almanac, published for year 1800 for the use of the residents of Istanbul and environs. The printer, Madteas Dpri, active from c1796-1813, was known for his small-format printing, including psalters, visions, Marian devotional texts, and especially calendars, which often bear woodcuts.....
Florence: Lorenzo Torrentino, 1551.
The remarkable case of young Margaretha Weiss [1529-?], a girl from the village of Rode outside of Speyer, who, for three years following her tenth birthday, reportedly neither ate nor drank, yet seemed to grow more or less normally, play with her friends, talk, laugh, and.....
Frankfurt and Leipzing: 1745.
First edition of the Compendieuses natürliches Zauber-Buch (Compendium of Natural Magic), the Swabian pharmacist, brewer, and amateur magician Johann Wallberg's composite text on conjuring and the household arts, a work immediately conspicuous by its peculiar two-page, two-color title. The first part of the text is a......
London: Nicholas Bourne, 1641.
A compelling look at the nimble two-or-three-masted ship known as a herring-buss. The author, Simon Smith (Charles 1's agent for the royal fisheries), discusses the construction and dimensions of herring-busses, the costs to build one, their projected socioeconomic benefits, and the laws that govern their use.....
![CAPITOLI Coi quali l'Ill[ustrissi]mi Congregazione DELL' OSPITALE DI SANTA MARIA DE' BASTARDINI...](/pictures/thumb/47.jpg?v=1600702529)
Modena: 1774.
One of only a very few known publications issued by the Carpi foundling hospital, a beneficent organization inaugurated in 1690 near Modena for the care and agrarian education of local bastardini. The short pamphlet comprises essentially the set of regulations governing the management of the orphanage's farmland, especially.....
![Blank Book]. ANON](/pictures/thumb/43.jpg?v=1600254094)
France: 1810.
A curious blank book bound in France around 1810. The rectos of the first three leaves bear a few workaday manuscript ledger expenses, dated 1860-1, but the remaining 633 laid-paper leaves are entirely blank—at least at first glance. In a raking light, however, we discover that to the.....
![Fasciculus medicinae] EPILOGO EN MEDICINA Y CIRUGIA CONBENIENTE ALA SALUD. [Colophon, k4v]: Fue...](/pictures/thumb/39.jpg?v=1599678868)
Burgos: Juan de Burgos, 1495.
Only Juan de Burgos edition, and second (of three) incunabular Spanish editions of the collection of variable medical texts known as the Fasciculus medicinae ("little bundle of medicine"), traditionally attributed to Johannes de Ketham. Karl Sudhoff postulated in the 1920s that Ketham was in fact.....
Strasbourg: Joannes Knobloch, 1516.
Popular German-language epitome of Bolognese astrologer and chiromancer Bartolommeo della Rocca Cocles's Chiromantie ac physionomie anastasis. Cocles discusses, in 23 short chapters, the fundamentals of physiognomy: the nature of the four principal "complexions" (humors), and how to determine the character of a person by not just.....
Leipzig: Wolfgang Stöckel, 1497.
Occasionally described as a work on the Immaculate Conception, Gaguinus's brief treatise is in fact a theological and physiological examination of the immaculate conception, not of Christ, but of Mary herself. The medieval doctrine, which has no canonical biblical authority, supposes that since Christ could not.....
Paris: Claude-François Laurens, 1801.
The great French Enlightenment astronomer Jérôme Lalande must have been busy working on his two most important works—the Histoire Céleste Française, his momumental star chart, and the Bibliographie astronomique—when this little almanac was published around 1801. Lalande's Almanac des physiciens is compelling as representive of a......
Paris: Guillaume DeBure, 1757.
[1428 lots of books, and nine lots of scientific instruments.] Paul Girardot de Préfond suffered a serious bout of melancholy after retiring—in his thirties—from the family timber business. His personal physician, Hyacinthe-Théodore Baron, a bibliophile of some standing (whose own not-insubstantial collection was dispersed at auction.....
Lyon: Amaulry, 1693.
With a Lagniappe: A Four-Leaf Clover. First Edition of one of the seminal French works on perfumery, by the most renowned parfumeur of the 17th and early 18th century, Simon Barbe. Written for a lay audience—nonprofessionals, such as attendants to French aristocracy—Le parfumeur françois contains simple but.....
Paris: Jacques Guerin, 1733.
This remarkable collection, rich in poetry, chivalric romances, history, military manuals, and music, contained some 7000 volumes. In the prefatory Avertissement, the compiler of the catalogue, Claude Gros de Boze, distinguishes between a bibliothèque and a cabinet de livres, remarking that the former is simply a......
Lille: 1655. Folio, 320 x 221 x 35 mm (text block), 358 x 240 x 50 mm (slipcase), three visible watermarks: an armorial crowned shield with three fleurs-de-lys related to Heawood 643 [Paris, 1671], not in Piccard or Gaudriault; horn, related to Heawood 2629 [Schleswig, 1654], not in Piccard or.....
![Ein Predigt von den Engeln. Mart. Luth. Wittemberg. 1531. [Colophon, C4v]: Gedruckt zu Wittemberg...](/pictures/thumb/15.png?v=1586443800)
Wittenberg: Hans Lufft, 1531.
Luther's sermon on angels, preached on the occasion of Michaelmas, 29 September 1530, was ostensibly about the Archangel Michael and the divine college of angels' reverence for God in Matthew 18.10, but the substance of the sermon was actually about fallen angels, in particular the Devil.....