Sales catalogue: Maggs Bros

Date:
1929
Reference:
WA/HMM/CM/Sal/13/74
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sales catalogue: Maggs Bros. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/78 page 7
    [ 6 | 1486 aD. RHAZES, or ABU BAKR, MuHaAmMeED (died 923). Elhavi: hoc est liber continens artem medicinae. ['Trans- lated from Arabic into Latin by Feragius, a doctor of Salerno. | EDITIO PRINCEPS. Gothic Letter, double columns of 74 lines. Initial spaces, with guide-letters. Initials painted in red and blue; a large initial with pen-ornamentations at the beginning of each book. Paragraph-marks and marginal flourishes in red. Angelus Britannicus’ printer's device, white on black ground, at end. (See Reproduction on opposite page). Brescia, Jacobus Britannicus, 18 October, 1486. Large folio. Fifteenth century binding of wooden boards covered with stamped brown leather. Collation : [**] a-z zo 4A-I[AA-FF°GG* aa-rr22ss-zz zz99 44° aaa* bb*ccc* ddd-fff*=590 leaves (first and last blank). Hain *13901. Proctor 6984. Choulant, p. 342. A magnificently large copy of the very rare FIRST EDITION of Rhazes’ colossal work, the Continens. Sir William Osler describes it as ‘ one of the most ponderous among weighty incunabula,’ and it is doubtful whether there is another incunable volume containing 590 leaves. The present copy weighs over 18lb. Rhazes, a Persian by birth, was one of the most illustrious of the Arabian _ physicians. He was the director of the hospital at Baghdad, and studied, specially, diseases of the eye and skin. The first writer to treat expressly of the diseases of childhood. In materia medica he advocated the use of
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3