Beschreibung
A RARE EARLY TREATISE ON TROPICAL MATERIA MEDICA. Second edition. Nuremberg: Peter Conrad Monath, 1719. Pot quarto (7 3/16" x 6 7/16", 196mm x 163mm). [Full collation available.] 43 leaves, pp. 1-2 (title, blank) 3-86. With 6 engraved plates (the first four as issued on half-sheets, 1.4 and 2.3 conjugate). Collated complete against the JCB copy. Bound in modern yapp-edged vellum. Title ink manuscript to the spine. A little bowed. Repairs to worming at the upper edge of the title-leaf and the first five plates. Mildly evenly tanned, with offsetting and some foxing. Damp-staining throughout, mostly mild. Good margins. Bookplate of the Cornelius J. Hauck Collection to the front paste-down. Michael Friedrich Lochner von Hummelstein (1662-1720) studied medicine and rose to be "Physicus" -- surgeon-general or the like -- of the city of Nuremberg. He was also archiater (chief doctor) to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI, and as such was perhaps the most prominent medical authority in the German-speaking world at the time. Lochner came to direct the Ephemeriden of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina -- the German answer to the Italian Accademie (such as the Lincei), recognized for its excellence by Leopold I -- one of the earliest scientific journals in Europe. Although Lochner never traveled to the New World, he was at the nexus of the flow of natural science in Northern Europe, and it is in this capacity that he must have come to learn about the parreira brava (Cissampelos glaberrima, vulg. abuta) and the caapeba (Piper marginatum; vulg. cake bush). These two distinct plants (there are also C. abutua (synonymous with C. pareira) and C. caapeba, confusing matters) grow throughout the Amazon -- Peru, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia -- and have long been used as anti-inflammatories and, in the case of the abuta, as a highly-effective diuretic, used to treat kidney stones and other renal ailments. Although this volume is in a later binding, it preserves the plates as issued, i.e., printed on conjugate half-sheets. The first edition of the work -- estimated at 1712 -- is rare indeed, with OCLC showing only five copies in institutions. The 1719 edition has come to auction five times. Cornelius J. Hauck (1893-1967) assembled a broad collection illustrating the history of the book, which in 1966 he donated to the Cincinnati Museum. He once described himself as "a gardener, first and foremost," and his collection of botanical books was among the greatest in America. Whereas his history of the book collection was sold by the Cincinnati Museum at Christie's New York 28 June 2006 -- which fetched the staggering sum of $12.4M -- his botanical collection was handled separately. The present item was purchased at Christie's New York 15 December 2005, lot 565. Not in Church, Hunt, Nissen, Plesch or Sabin. European Americana V.719/101; Pritzel 5556*. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers JLR0498
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