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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. ANSELMI, Giorgio, the younger. 

    Georgii Anselmi nepotis Epigrammaton libri septem. Sosthyrides. Peplum Palladis. Aeglogae...

    Venice, Maffeo Pasini, September 1528. 

    The definitive edition of the epigrams of Giorgio Anselmi, grandson of the astrologer and music theorist of the same name, with several epigrams on his grandfather’s lost works on magic and the occult. 

    £875

  2. APULEIUS, Lucius. 

    L. Apuleii Metamorphoseos, sive lusus Asini libri XI.  Floridoru[m] IIII.  De deo Socratis I.  De philosophia...

    Venice, ‘in aedibus Aldi et Andreae Soceri’, May 1521. 

    First Aldine edition of the works of the second-century AD Numidian novelist Apuleius, with the editio princeps of Alcinous’s second-century handbook on Plato’s philosophy in the original Greek, from the library of the great French writer Victor Hugo. 

    £2000

  3. 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

  4. BLANCHON, Jacques.

    Iacobi Blanchoni ucessiensis adversus Ludovicum beneventanum abbatem selestensem defensionum liber.

    Lyon, Jean de Tournes, 1550.

    First edition of a very rare work of sixteenth-century Lyonnese Neoplatonism, an elegantly-printed de Tournes edition. Ostensibly a simple series of remarks against the theses of the (presumably sternly Scholastic) abbot of Selestan, this is a tract of Renaissance moral philosophy. The theme of...

    £950

  5. GASPARIN, Agénor Étienne, Comte de.

    Des tables tournantes du surnaturel en général et des esprits par le Cte Agénor de Gasparin.

    Paris, Bonaventure and Ducessois for E. Dentu, 1854.

    Scarce first edition of Gasparin’s early experiments in table-turning – a form of séance in which tables appear to rotate or levitate of their own accord – which would prove highly controversial and integral to the nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement.

    £1500

  6. [GRICK, Friedrich.] 

    Fortalitium scientiae, das ist: die unfehlbare, volkommeliche, unerschätzliche Kunst aller Künsten und...

    [Nuremberg,] 1617. 

    First edition of this provocative tract on Rosicrucianism and alchemy presenting arguments both for and against the Order, purportedly written by the 562-year-old fictitious Rosicrucian, Hugo de Alverda. 

    £2850

  7. [KRÜDENER, Barbara Juliane de Vietinghoff, Baronne de.]

    Valérie, ou Lettres de Gustave de Linar à Ernest de G… Tome...

    Paris, Henrichs, 1804.

    Rare first edition of Valérie, the most famous novel by the Russian mystic and novelist Madame de Krüdener (1766–1824), who for a time exerted an influence over Tsar Alexander I.

    £800

  8. LIEBIG, Justus von.

    Autograph letter to the publishers Heinrich Ludwig Brönner.

    Darmstadt, 16 September 1847.

    Letter from the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) to H. L. Brönner, the Frankfurt publishers and booksellers named after their eighteenth-century founder.

    £750

  9. LISTER, Joseph.

    Three autograph letters, signed, to Sir John Evans.

    London, 12 Park Crescent, Portland Place, 19 April 1896 and 18 February 1898, and Bath, York House Hotel, 20 November 1898.

    Three letters by the great surgeon Joseph Lister to the archaeologist and geologist Sir John Evans (1823–1908), who was treasurer of the Royal Society during Lister’s presidency.

    £750

  10. LOCATELLI, Lodovico. 

    Theatro d’Arcani … nel quale si tratta dell’arte chimica, et suoi arcani, con gli afforismi d’Ippocrate...

    Milan, Gio. Pietro Ramellati, 1644. 

    First edition of Locatelli’s alchemical tract, which includes the first Italian translation of Paracelsus. 

    £2500

  11. MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.

    Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя....

    St Petersburg, Izdanie “Russkoi knizhnoi torgovli”, 1867.

    First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.

    £100

  12. PASTEUR, Louis. 

    Études sur la bière, ses maladies, causes qui les provoquent, procédé pour la rendre inaltérable, avec une...

    Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1876.

    First edition.  In his Études sur la bière, Pasteur ‘described a new and perfected method of preparing pure yeast [and] emphasized that yeast occasionally required small quantities of oxygen in order to retain its “youth” and its capacity to germinate in oxygen-free environments. ...

    £750

  13. PASTEUR, Louis.

    Visiting card with autograph note.

    [No place, undated.]

    With the autograph note ‘Avec ses remerciments très empressés’. 45 rue d’Ulm was the address of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, where Pasteur began his education and where he taught intermittently before being appointed director of scientific studies in 1856.

    £400

  14. REFELL, A. 

    Trugbilder: Eine Anleitung Erscheinungen, auf optischer Täuschung beruhend, nach Belieben hervorzuheben und wissenschaftliche...

    Stuttgart, Rieger, 1865. 

    First German edition, rare, of this fascinating study of mirages and optical illusions, in particular ghostly apparitions, in which the author attempts to demonstrate using the principles of optics how they might appear, with the aim of proving the absurdity of the superstitions to which they...

    £1250

  15. 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

  16. STANYHURST, William.

    Veteris hominis per expensa quatuor novissima metamorphosis, et novi genesis.

    Antwerp, Cornelius Woons, 1661.

    First edition, rare, of this work on death, the Last Judgement, Hell, and Heaven, by the Irish Jesuit William Stanyhurst (1601–1663), illustrated with five striking full-page emblematic engravings.

    £875

  17. 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

  18. [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