KHUNRATH, Conrad.
Medulla destillatoria et medica sextum aucta & renovata.
Hamburg, Ex bibliopolis Frobeniano, 1638£1,850.00
4to. pp. (xiv) 384 (xxxvi [index]) 365 (xxvii [index]). Gothic letter. Engraved t-p to first part, a very strong impression, letterpress t-p in red and black, letterpress divisional t-p to second part. Woodcut initials, woodcut and typographical head- and tailpieces. Vellum over pasteboard, rebacked, spotted, ms. pen trials (star of David) to boards. Some light browning and foxing (poor paper), wormhole to upper margin of first few ll. just touching one or two letters, a good copy.
Rare ‘sixth’ edition (sextum aucta & renovata) of this popular compendium of distillation and other alchemical processes by the German alchemist and metallurgist Conrad Khunrath (1555-1613), first published in 1594 and ‘much enlarged’ in 1605 (Ferguson I, p. 461). It went through at least eight editions, the last in 1703. The German text is divided into “tracts” on various substances and chemicals, including clays, gums, liquors and spirits, the second part dedicated to distillation of waters, salts and oils. Occasional brief sections attribute Khunrath’s recipes to the treatment of specific diseases, such as melancholy, plague and gonorrhoea.
An associate of the German physician and alchemist Philip Theophrastus von Hoffenheim, better known as Paracelsus, Khunrath was strongly influenced by Paracelsian (“spagyric”) medicine and uses several of Paracelsus’s recipes here, such as those for “Theophrastian” balsam. However, ‘his reference to Georg Agricola and Conrad Gesner confirms the influence also of metallurgical knowledge on the development of chemistry. Although Khunrath, as his contemporaries were doing, occasionally attributed cures to God’s blessing [as he does in the preface] or the effects of the signs of the zodiac and the planets, his book represents a masterpiece of clear, practical prescriptions and in the 17th century appears to have been considered a storehouse of information on curing’ (Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1981), vol. VII, p. 355).
Not in BM C17 Ger. Not in Osler or Heirs of Hippocrates. Not in Ferguson. This edition is rare in the UK and US: OCLC notes Manchester only in the UK and Chicago and NLM only in the US.In stock
