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Science

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Science at Quaritch is broadly defined, ranging from medicine, anatomy, pharmacology (including herbals) and natural history to astronomy, physics, chemistry and mathematics.

An interest in the origins of modern chemistry has led to a specialisation in works on alchemy and distillation, and from there we have also branched out into occultism and hermeticism. We have developed an interest in gastronomy and books on nutrition and wine, an area which over the years has become one of our specialities.
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  1. ALLIONI, Carlo.

    Flora Pedemontana sive enumeratio methodica stirpium indigenarum Pedemontii [– Florae Pedemontanae icones accedit...

    Turin, Giovanni Michele Briolo, 1785.

    First edition of the earliest Italian regional floras by the ‘Linnaeus of Piedmont’, here in the extremely rare hand-coloured state and extensively annotated by Giovanni Battista Balbis, the author’s pupil and successor at the Botanical Garden of the University of Turin.

    £30000

  2. BISSON, Louis-Auguste. 

    ‘Wildfire’. 

    Paris, c. 1844. 

    An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times. 

    £14500

  3. [LOO, Pieter van, (attributed).] 

    156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits. 

    [Holland, c. 1760–80]. 

    A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784). 

    £110000

  4. PONTANO, Giovanni.

    De rebus coelestibus.

    Naples, ‘ex officina Sigismundi Mayr Germani : summo ingenio artificis Ioannetto Salodio : Antonio Vuerengrundt : Evangelista Papiensi :...

    First editions of three works on cosmology, ethics, and astrology by the Neapolitan humanist, poet, and polymath Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), an important sammelband from the celebrated library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), professor of natural philosophy and natural history at the University...

    £11000

  5. POCOCKE, Richard. 

    A Description of the East, and some other Countries.  London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and...

    [Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743–1745. 

    First edition, demy folio issue. A successful churchman Pococke (1704-1765) is now best remembered as a traveller and mountaineer. His earliest journeys were undertaken between 1733 and 1736 through continental Europe. His ‘next and most ambitious journey, from 1737 to 1740, was to the Near...

    £8000

  6. TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.

    Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.

    [(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]

    First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.

    £6750

  7. BERRYAT, Jean, et al., editors.

    Receuil de Mémoires, ou Collection de Pièces Académiques, concernant la Médicine, l’Anatomie...

    Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.

    The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...

    £6000

  8. RICHARDUS ANGLICUS.

    Correctorium alchymiae ... Das is reformierte Alchimy, oder Alchimeibesserung, und Straffung der Alchimistischen...

    Strasbourg, Bernard Jobin, 1581.

    First edition of ‘a very rare collection’ (Duveen) of five alchemical treatises, comprising Richardus Anglicus’ Correctorium and Reformierte Alchimei, Lull’s Apertorium et accuratio vegetabilium and Vom philosophischen Stein, and Geber’s Secretum.

    £4500

  9. BONET, Nicolas.

    Habes Nicholai Bonetti viri p[er]spicacissimi quattuor volumina: Metaphysicam videl[icet] naturale[m] phylosophia[m]...

    Venice, Boneto Locatello for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 1505.

    First collected edition of the works of the French Franciscan Friar Nicolas Bonet (c. 1280–1343), owned and annotated by the Italian historian, biographer, and physician Paolo Giovio (1486–1552).

    £4000

  10. COLONNA, Fabio. 

    Φυτοβασανος, sive Plantarum aliquot historia … 

    Naples, Orazio Salviani, 1592. 

    First edition, a landmark in botanical illustration, ‘the first strictly botanical book with intaglio prints’ (Blunt). 

    £4000

  11. FLEMING, Alexander, Sir.

    On the antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with special Reference to their Use in...

    [London, H.K. Lewis & Co., 1944.]

    Second edition of Fleming’s study announcing the discovery of penicillin, one of 250 copies which Fleming commissioned to be printed in 1944. The original offprint, issued in 1929 in 150 copies and liberally distributed by Fleming to the scientific community at large for the prompt furthering...

    £4000

  12. BACON, Francis. 

    Francisci Baconi, Baronis de Verulamio, Vice-Comitis Sancti Albani, operum moralium et civilium tomus … cura...

    London, Edward Griffin [and John Haviland] for Richard Whitaker [and John Norton], 1638. 

    First edition, first issue, a copy from the celebrated Albani library: tangible witness to the early and fecund reception of Bacon’s thought in the circles of Galilean science in Italy. 

    £3500

  13. NEWTON, Isaac.

    Opuscula Mathematica, philosophica et philologica. Collegit partimque Latine vertit ac recensuit Joh. Castillioneus...

    Lausanne and Geneva, Bousquet & soc., 1744.

    First edition of Newton’s collected works, a major tool in the dissemination of Newton’s science and a major publication in the history of science.  The edition, edited and introduced by the Pisa alumnus Giovanni Salvemini da Castiglione, contains twenty-six works (which, while having appeared...

    £3500

  14. WALCOTT, John. 

    The Figures, Description, and History of exotic Animals, comprised under the Classes Amphibia and Pisces of Linnaeus. 

    London, W. Justins for the Author, and sold by White & son, Robson & Clarke, and J. Mathews, 1788.

    First and only edition, very rare, published in parts.  The engraved figures and their descriptions comprise a variety of turtles, snakes, frogs, and fish, including several notable species from America.  Though Walcott writes in his preface of the prospect of ‘a Second Part, which will contain...

    £3500

  15. L’HÔPITAL, Guillaume François Antoine, marquis de. 

    Analyse des infiniment petits, pour l’intelligence des lignes...

    Paris, François Montalant, 1715. 

    Second edition (first 1696) of l’Hôpital’s famous Analyse, the first textbook on differential calculus, inspired by the work of Leibniz and the Bernoulli brothers, this copy profusely annotated by an anonymous but proficient eighteenth-century mathematician. 

    £3500

  16. HUMBLOT, F.

    Journal de voyage ...

    France, June-September 1866.

    A handsome manuscript on mining engineering, apparently unpublished, recording visits undertaken by the engineer F. Humblot to coal mines and iron works in eastern and southern France in 1866, containing well over one hundred beautifully executed technical drawings.

    £3500

  17. DEPARCIEUX, Antoine.

    Essai sur les probabilités de la durée de la vie humaine; d’où l’on déduit la manière de déterminer...

    Paris, chez les frères Guerin, 1746.

    A large, crisp and illustrious copy of the first edition of a classic of statistical science: it is the first to define expectation of life – which Deparcieux calls ‘la vie moyenne’ – and the first to contain life tables for men and women.

    £3000

  18. CIUCCI, Antonio Filippo.

    Promptuarium Chirurgicum in quo agitur de Morbis, qui indigent manuali Operatione Artis Chirurgiae.

    Macerata, Joseph Piccinus, 1679–1680.

    First edition, very rare, of this handbook of practical surgery, by the author of the first treatise of forensic medicine written in Italian.

    £2850

  19. SECHENOV, Ivan Mikhaylovich.

    Fisiologia nervnoy sistemy [in Cyrillic].

    St. Petersburg, 1866.

    first edition, rare, of Sechenov’s influential lectures at the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy. Sechenov states in his preface that as soon as he began to lecture (St. Petersburg in 1860 was his first professorship) he discovered the deficiencies of the existing textbooks, which tended to be...

    £2750

  20. GIOVANNI BATTISTA DA NAPOLI. 

    Opera et trattato, che insegna molti dignissimi secreti contra la peste, con li quali subito si...

    [Venice, 1556?] 

    Rare second revised edition (first 1527) of this work offering advice against the plague by the Augustinian friar Giovanni Battista, interleaved and annotated with unpublished Latin notes on the subject. 

    £2750