PLANIS CAMPY, David de.

Very rare first edition of this most interesting medical work based on astrology and alchemy, beautifully printed with a fine engraved portrait of the author and hermetic title, with an additional beautifully engraved alchemical title. “An author who deserves greater attention than he has received is David de Planis Campy (1589-ca.1644), who produced ten works on medical chemistry and traditional alchemy. He was a councillor and Chirurgien ordinaire to Louis XIII, and his works were collected and published in a folio volume in 1646. He wrote that alchemy is a science that teaches the means of separating the elements of each mixed body produced by nature and of separating the pure from the impure.”A. G. Debus, ‘The French Paracelsians’. Planis Campy wrote on phlebotomy, musket wounds, the plague, and mineral and chemical remedies. He made several references to Dee’s Monas in his works. The engraved title page flatteringly presents King Louis XIII as the ‘French Hercules’. At the foot of the pedestal on the left there is a round diagram representing the principles of ‘the Great Work’ with the Hebrew word ‘Yah’, at the centre, which corresponds to the divine, heavenly principle. On the opposite side are the sun, moon and mercury, within a mountain or the philosophers stone. The portrait of the author is also very fine. The circular French inscription gives his name and states that here, in 1627, he is in his 38th year and is surgeon to the French King. It refers to him as ‘L’Edelphe’ a follower of the theories of Paracelsus, also indicated by references to the microcosm and macrocosm in the book placed in front of him.

The present work has the subtitle “the seven illness held, until now, to be incurable, and now treatable with the art of chemical medicine”, the hydra of the title having seven heads. The work is thus divided into seven chapters each dealing with one of these illnesses. They are in order; Leprosy, ‘Podagre’ or Gout, Hydropsie, Epilepsy, Cancer, ‘Noli me-tangeré’ or hidden cancer, and ‘Escrouelles’ another form of malign cancer. Each chapter gives a definition of the illness followed by its causes, various forms of the illness, its signs, and prognostics followed by various chemical cures devised by the author. As such it give tremendous insight into the new forms of ‘chemical’ treatments that moved away from traditional Galenic medicine.