4to. unpaginated (ff. 189), printed gothic characters, with double-column text in small print by Benoît Bonnin, the edition is adorned with a beautiful frontispiece woodcut title placed in an architectural frame and bearing the typographical mark to the Angel of Vincent I of Portonaris; brown full calf (modern binding in the style of 16th century bindings), gilded outer edges, ornamental gilt on spine, S.l.n.d. [on the colophon], previous copy of doctor Jean Vigier (his signature is on the title and on the last sheet,and contains hand annotations by him in the margin of a dozen leaflets and many underlined passages); some light scattered spotting, worm traces on the first 5 pages with minor loss of letters, otherwise copy in very good condition, published by Vincent de Portonaris, Lyon, 1532

Synopsis

Rare copy of this well-known treatise on Renaissance medicine by Marco Gatinaria and comments on the “Liber Nonus” by the famous Arab doctor Ibn Zakaria Razi, known as Rhazes Almansur, followed by the texts of Astari, Landulfo and Sebastiano dell’Aquila.
Marco Gatinara (circa 1442-1496) taught the practice of Rhazes at the faculty of Pavia. We owe him the invention of the syringe, the first models of which he made in wood then in metal. Moreover, a woodcut figure on folio 41 represents a large syringe, or rather a clyster.
No copies of this edition are listed in the Lyon Library.
This particular copy was for doctor Jean Vigier (died 1665), born and died in Castres where he practised medicine and surgery. He’s the author of various treaties including La Grande Chirurgie des Ulcères (1609) [The Great Surgery of ulcers]. It bears his signature on the title and the last sheet, and contains annotations by hand in the margin of a dozen pages and many underlined passages.
“Gatinari (died 1496) is regarded as an ‘Arabistic Writer’ – this contains a mass of practical therapeutic information checked throughout by personal experiences. He has a marked place in the evolution of medical thought and practice” (Klebs).
Abu Bakr Mohammad Ibn Zakariya al-Razi, known in the West as Rhazes, was the leading scholar of the early Islamic world. His stature is comparable only to that of Ibn Sina a century later. Influenced by Hippocrates and classical Greek medicine, Al Razi wrote numerous books on a range of medical and scientific subjects. The Al-Mansuri and Al-Hawi, his encyclopedic reviews of medicine, were translated into several languages and became a standard text for Islamic and European medical students for centuries.
He was a keen experimenter and observer. As director of a large hospital in Baghdad and physician to the royal court, he engaged in medicine on a practical level and these experiences permeate his writings. He saw the importance of recording a patient’s case history and made clinical notes about the progress and symptoms of different illnesses, including his own.
For the first time, Rhazes reported the origin of the ankle vein: “… saphena … ad partem cruris silvestrem tendit, … quousque ad cavillam perveniat exteriorem, quae etiam vena dicitur sciatica ”: “… the saphenous vein … extends through the outer part of the leg, … until it reaches the outer ankle, which is also called the sciatic vein”. For pain management he wrote: “ Sciatica autem est phlebotomanda, cum dolor a brachiis usque ad pedem protenditur ”: “Moreover, the sciatic vein must be lanced when the pain extends from the arm to the foot.”
Bibliographic References: Baudrier, t. V, pp. 440-441. – Durling, n°2020.