ESTIENNE, Charles.

The first edition of this important book on the best diet and healthy eating habits. The younger brother of the famous printer Robert Estienne, Charles (1504-64) was a physician who made important discoveries in the field of anatomy. Eventually following the family’s business, with a focus on popular, didactic works, he became royal printer in 1552. He wrote and edited influential works for the educated middle classes, which appeared in Latin, Italian and French. ‘De nutrimentis’ was a dietary manual addressed to ‘the learned, sedentary, or perhaps the public servant’ (Albala, p.34); the dedicatee, Guillaume Bailly, was indeed ‘avocat’ in Paris. The work begins with a definition of healthy food, and proceeds, in Part I, to examine different types and their effects on the human body. For instance, bread, marzipan, pulses, polenta, types of pasta (vermicelli, lasagnette, maccheroni), water,
wine, meat and its seasonings, fish, eggs, fruit (also within pastry), oil, and vinegar. Part II describes unhealthy food as well as the various ways in which food may be filling and nutritious, not filling but very nutritious, and filling but not nutritious, as well as their effect on bodily humours and the shrinking or swelling of the stomach. Part III addresses therapeutic food, which are good for the sick, according to their gravity and condition. There is a thorough index for easier consultation. A very interesting work on Renaissance good nutrition and resulting ‘wellness’.

This copy was in the library of the German polymath Johann Heinrich Boeckler (1611-72), official historiographer of Sweden and professor at Uppsala. He died in Strasbourg. A few decades later, this copy was part of the personal library of the French physician and naturalist Johann Hermann (1738-1800). His collection of 18,000 volumes constitutes the basis of the Natural History Museum of Strasbourg and it was purchased by the city in 1802.