Bibliographical notes on histories of inventions and books of secrets.

  • John Ferguson
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Bibliographical notes on histories of inventions and books of secrets. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    35/428 (page 19)
    17- In the British Museum (1038 . d. 35) there is a volume containing over a dozen small receipt books to which reference will have to be repeatedly made. They are chiefly in Italian of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and several are mere chap books. The earliest of them to be mentioned belongs to this category. It is No. 12 in the volume. Recettario Nouo probatiffimo a molte infirmita, & etiadio di molte gentilezze vtile a chi levora prouare, Cofa noua non pin ftampata. M . D . XXXII. Small 8vo. Signature A in eight; or, pp. [16]. Colophon: ir Stampato in Vinegia ad inflantia di Zuan maria Lirico Venitiano. Nelli anni del Signore. M . D . XXXII. This is a book of medical receipts of the usual kind. The title is enclosed in a border similar to that on the title-page of the Italian version of Michael Scotus’ Physionomia, Venice, 1532, from which it may be inferred that the ornament was a common one with the Venice printers of the time. 18. The first treatise on any art can hardly fail to be an interesting one. Even if it be defective, it will still furnish a summary of the knowledge of the time, which is invaluable. Moreover, there will be a flavour of originality about it which subsequent books must necessarily lack, and it will be the work of an expert who has practised the art and knows the details. This is the interest, for instance, of Neri’s work on glass-making, and it is equally so of the work on dyeing by Gioanventura Rosetti. So far as I know this is the first separate work on the subject, and it is of very great rarity. Receipts about dyeing are given in a good many of the secret books, more particularly in the Kuiistbiichlein, Ettliche Ki'niste^^'j Alexis, etc., etc. The present work, however, deals with the whole subject in a systematic way and not only so, but gives woodcuts of the plant required for the various operations. The technical details are hardly suitable for exposition in this paper, and are besides so lengthy that they had better be dealt with separately, but as it is distinctly a book of technical receipts, and the only one of the kind which I have met with in the whole course of my researches, it may be described. Singularly enough, of this book there was only one edition, so far as I know.