Science
Contact Andrea Mazzocchi
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.-
STENUIT, Alfred, and G. de VOGHEL.
Manuel de sauvetage dans les mines. Notions théoriques sur les accidents et le sauvetage....
Tamines, Duculot-Roulin, 1909.
Only edition of this attractively illustrated and very rare guide to life-saving in mines, by the Belgian mining engineers Stenuit and de Voghel. Divided into three parts, the book opens with explanations of the possible hazards, ranging from asphyxiation to explosions and underground fires, as...
£350
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STEWART, John; A. B. ALLEN, editor.
Stable Economy: A Treatise on the Management of Horses, in Relation to Stabling, Grooming,...
New York, D. Appleton & Co., and Philadelphia, George S. Appleton, 1845.
First American edition of Stewart’s treatise. ‘It may be thought, perhaps, by some, presumptuous on the part of any American, to undertake the editing with a view of improvement, of a work of the standard reputation of Stewart’s Stable Economy. But it must be recollected that the climate...
£175
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STIRLING, A.M.W.
Ghosts vivisected. An impartial inquiry into their manners, habits, mentality, motives and physical construction....
London, Robert Hale, 1957.
First edition, a very readable account of otherworldly encounters, with illustrations by the Symbolist painter Evelyn de Morgan, the author’s elder sister.
£40
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SURTEES, Robert Smith.
The Horseman’s Manual, being a Treatise on Soundness, the Law of Warranty, and generally on the Laws relating...
London, M.A. Pittman for Alfred Miller, 1831.
First edition of Surtees’s first work, the only publication to bear his name, from the family of the dedicatee. Though best known for his sporting articles and novels, Robert Smith Surtees (1805–1864) was, alongside his landed interests, a respected jurist in County Durham, serving as justice...
£1250
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SWOBODA, Hermann.
Die Perioden des menschlichen Organismus: in ihrer psychologischen und biologischen Bedeutung.
Leipzig, Deuticke, 1904.
First editions, all rare, the first two being foundational works in the formation of the theory of biorhythm. Swoboda’s early studies on the recurrence or periodicity in phenomena acquired a psychological character and application in his work since his encounter and brief experience of analysis with...
£200
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[SYPHILIS.]
Della tabe dorsale ovvero della cura della consunzione negli uomini e nelle donne con la spiegazione de’ sintomi,...
Venice, Graziosi, 1785.
First Italian translation, uncommon, of Tabes dorsalis: or, the cause of consumption in young men and women, by ‘a Physician of Bristol’.
£135
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[TACCONI, Gaetano.]
‘Medicae inst[ructio]nes’, ‘Tractatus de febribus’, and ‘Compendiosa nonulloru[m] m[or]boru[m] peculiariu[m]...
[Bologna, Italy,] 1739.
An extensive manuscript compendium of apparently unpublished medical texts compiled by a student at the Archiginnasio of Bologna who studied under Gaetano Tacconi (1689–1782), comprising notes on the prescription and preparation of medication, on fevers, and on a wide variety of illnesses. The...
£1250
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TALIANI, Giuseppe.
Orologi riflessi, per mezo di un picciolo specchio parallelo o perpendicolare all’orizonte.
Macerata, Filippo Camacci, 1648.
Only recorded edition, rare, of this work by mathematician Taliani on the construction of sundials in the interior of buildings, to be achieved through mirrors reflecting solar rays – our copy uniquely furnished with a contemporary large hand-drawn representation of the face of a sundial. ...
£950
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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
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TAYLOR, Alfred Swaine.
On the Processes for detecting Blood in medico-legal Cases.
[London, Guy’s Hospital Reports, 1870.]
Taylor’s own offprint of this interesting article on detecting blood ‘for the purposes of pathology and legal medicine’, in which he publishes, for the first time, a description of the spectroscopic process developed by the eminent microscopist and geologist Henry Clifton Sorby (1826–1908),...
£350
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THOMPSON, J.
Modern Practice of Farriery, or complete Horse Doctor, explaining the various Symptoms of the approaching Disorders...
Philadelphia, Joseph Crukshank, 1807.
First Philadelphia (second American) edition. Penned by a Yorkshire farrier from Clifton, the Complete Horse Doctor first assumed the title of the ‘Modern Practice of Farriery’ for the New York edition of 1793, despite having been in circulation in Britain since 1760.
£250
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TISSOT, Samuel August André David.
Traité de l'épilepsie ...
Paris, P.F. Didot, 1770.
The scarce first edition of Tissot’s important monograph on epilepsy, the “first book on this subject to show all the characteristics of Enlightenment in medicine. Written in the French vernacular, it is at once learned, scientific, and readable...” (Temkin, The Falling Sickness p. 229).
£800
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[VACCINATION.]
Agli abitanti del dipartimento dell’Ombrone proclama del Comitato Centrale di Vaccina sedente in Siena. Abitanti...
Siena, Onorato Porri, 1808.
A seemingly unrecorded broadside promoting smallpox vaccination, issued in the short-lived Italian department of Ombrone under the First French Empire by the Central Vaccination Committee in Siena.
£650
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VILLA, Antonio, and Giovanni Battista VILLA.
Dispositio systematica conchyliarum terrestrium et fluviatilium quae adservantur...
Milan, ex typis Borroni et Scotti, 1841.
First edition of this catalogue of molluscs and shellfish in the collection of Antonio and Giovanni Battista Villa.
£275
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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
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WALLIS, William.
The Western Gentleman’s Farrier, containing Remedies for the different Diseases to which Horses are incident...
Troy (OH), John T. Tullis, 1838.
Second edition of an American work on farriery, with diseases found only in the Western States including ‘big head’ and ‘nasal polypi’. First published in 1832 on the observation that ‘most of the present works on Farriery, or more especially those adapted to our western climate, are...
£250
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[WALL, Thomas].
A Second Christian Warning-Piece; wherein is shewed the first and chief Cause of Englands present Misery … Humbly...
London, 1681-2.
First edition, very rare, of a vehement anti-Catholic tract published in the context of the Exclusion Crisis; bound with the principal astrological work of John Holwell (a slightly imperfect copy).
£1750
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WELLS, Edward.
The young Gentleman’s Astronomy, Chronology, and Dialling, containing such Elements of the said Arts or Sciences,...
London, James & John Knapton, 1725.
Third edition of Wells’s successful mathematical handbook.
£350
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WHITE, James.
A Compendium of the veterinary Art, containing an accurate Description of all the Diseases to which the Horse is...
London, J. Badcock and Longman & Co., and Canterbury, W. Bristow, [c. 1804].
Sixth edition. Evidently a successful text, further editions appeared soon after the work’s first publication and would eventually be expanded into four volumes (the present edition is often found accompanied by The materia medica and pharmacopoeia).
£225
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WHITE, James.
A Compendium of the veterinary Art, containing an accurate Description of all the Diseases to which the Horse is...
Canterbury, W. Bristow for J. Badcock, London, 1802.
First edition of one of the first works on ‘the veterinary art’. With the formalisation of the increasingly academic subject of equine medicine and the foundation of the Royal Veterinary College in the late eighteenth century, the term ‘veterinary’ soon supplanted ‘farriery’, first...
£275