Medical sammelband, including the first edition of his "Apothekerordnung"

Brunfels, Otto. Reformation der Apotecken, welche inhaltet vil guter stück, die eynem yeglichen fast nützlich sein [...]. Von edlen steynen, wie die zuken[n]en [...] Wie man Syrupen, Latwergen, und Confect machen soll, verteütscht auß dem Latein durch D. Hansen Eles.

€ 58,000.00

I: Very rare first edition of this book on the equipping and the managing of pharmacies. A single copy in auction records (2011, Reiss, sale 142: 40,000 Euros, also bound in a medical sammelband). The pretty woodcut on the title page shows the interior of a pharmacy, with one apothecary taking over a client's recipe, another fetching a can from a shelf, and a third at work with mortar and pestle.

The humanist, physician and theologian Brunfels (1490-1534), "first in time and importance among the German botanists of the 16th century" (Garrison/Morton 279), turned to Lutheranism in 1521, after which he had to flee; Ulrich von Hutten found him a parish near Frankfurt. Later, Brunfels turned to Basel, where he earned an M.D. degree, and Strasbourg, where he published several works on pharmacy and paediatrics.

Slight brownstaining and waterstaining; a few occasional edge flaws. The lower margin of fol. 30 contains an extensive, roughly contemporary note on camphor: "Der recht natürlich campher wirdt also probiert: Nimm ein new backen brot als bald es auß dem ofen kommen ist, schneids mitten entzwei, leg den campher darein: so er wässerecht wirdt, ist er rechtschaffen, so er aber dierr und trucken bleibt ist er gemacht, sol wol bewart werden verschwinden liederlich, man soll in behalten in aine marmelsteinen oder Alabastunen geschirr, darzu gethan leinsamen [...]".

II: First edition of this copious medical manual. The woodcuts show babies in the womb, two Phlebotomy Men, the blood vessels of the head (used twice), and two different diagrams of the eye (one a cross-section such as it would be used three decades later in Alhazen's "Opticae Thesaurus"). Leonhard Fuchs would challenge the publication as an adaptation of his own "De medendis singularum humani corporis partium libri IV".

Old handwritten ownership on title page deleted; some browning and waterstaining. Slight worming to front endpapers; endpapers at rear have additional recipes in a contemporary hand. The pretty binding shows slight worming, otherwise well preserved.