Folio. 14 leaves, + 497 leaves (alternate page numbering), Latin text, mostly in double column, Printer's woodcut device on title and on recto of leaf 488, 5 full-page woodcut illustrations and numerous woodcut initials, 19th century half vellum with marbled boards, rubbed and lightly soiled, light foxing in places, water staining to first 8 leaves, title page stained with 3 tears (with loss of 4 letters in 1 word), trimmed and remounted, occasional old marginalia, 2 neat marginal repairs on pages 8 and 296, otherwise copy in general good condition, Juntas, Venice, first edition, enlarged issue, 1553.

Synopsis

RARE. An important work on the thermal baths of the Greeks, Latins and Arabs. The most extensive collection of balneology texts, compiled in the 16th century, with excerpts from the works of Agricola, Avicenna, Averroes, Celsus, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, Galen, Fuchs and numerous other authors. The work discusses the baths of Baden (Switzerland), Ischia, Montecatini Pfaefers, Pozzuoli, Viterbo, Volterra, Wiesbaden, etc. The five full-page woodcuts depict a thermal bath, a bath-house in the Vosges, the pump in Bad Fideris in Prätigau, the cross section of an ancient bathhouse and a map of the Adriatic coast between Aquileia and Trieste.
Bibliographic references: Adams D-167 & T-482. Cushing D88. Durling 1101. Duveen 42. Garrison & Morton 1986. Heirs of Hippocrates 126 (with illustration). Index Aureliensis 112.054. Ley, Gesner, p143, no 34. Mortimer, ‘Italian 16th Century Books in the Harvard Library’, 214. Osler 1902. Wellcome I, 652.