GATTINARIA, Marco [et al].

Very rare fourth edition, first published 1506, of this compendium of cures, beginning with Marco Gattinaria’s and containing besides: Blasius Astarius’s (d. 1504) work on fevers, De curis febrium libellus utilis; Cesare Landulfo’s (dates unknown) book of cures, De curis earundem opusculum; and Sebastiani dall’Aquila (d. c.1510) on the celebrated “French disease” (Tractatus de morbo Gallico celeberrimus), i.e. syphilis – dedicated to Ludovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua – as well as his work on fevers of the blood, De febre sanguis. All of these works were apparently first printed as part of this compendium. Most of the cures here are for various fevers, and naturally derived entirely from humoral medicine, with Galen featuring frequently. Other diseases covered by Gattinaria (and also of interest to the annotator) are various humoral imbalances, tremor of the heart, kidney stones and difficulty in passing urine, colic, pleurisy, the flux and epilepsy.

The influence of Arabic medicine is strongly felt here, with Gattinaria working from the Noni, or Nine Books of Almansor, otherwise known as the Liber ad Almansorem, by the 10^th-century Persian physician Rhazes, or al-Razi. Blasius Astarius, meanwhile, derived his cure for fever from “Aben Hali”, possibly referring to Ibn-al-Haytham. The contemporary annotator appears to be reading Avicenna in conjunction with this work and makes frequent references to a specific edition; the design of the enema depicted in a woodcut in the first work is also taken from Avicenna.