[POMARIUS, Petrus Valentinus, pseud.? and HOBBES, Stephen]
Enchiridion Medicum: Containing an Epitome of the Whole Course of Physicke: with the Examination of a Chirurgian, by way of a Dialogue between the Doctor and the Student.
London, Printed by N[icholas]. O[kes]. [and Thomas Snodham] for John Royston and William Bladon, 1612.£2,750.00
4to. pp. (iv) 172, 169 (vii). Roman and italic letter. Two parts in one, separate t-p to each, woodcut publisher’s device on second. Woodcut initials and headpieces, typographical head- and tailpieces. Occasional near-contemporary ms. annotations. 17th-century calf, triple fillet border in blind, scratches, repaired at corners, spine discreetly restored, red morocco label, gilt. First t-p with browning and chipping at edges, second leaf with edge browning, the odd rust spot or stain (obscuring a couple of letters on F4), a good copy.
Second edition, first published 1609, of this series of dialogues in English designed to instruct students of medicine. This edition was doubled in size by the addition of a new third dialogue, forming a general practice of medicine, and also the “Flowers of Celsus,” a compendium of classical medical aphorisms. The first work is usually attributed to Petrus Pomeranus, a Valencian physician active in the first part of the sixteenth century (some copies apparently have variant title-pages with his name), though this English “translation” does not correspond to his only known work, a medical compendium called the Articella. It begins with a general discussion of medicine, a brief course on the humours, hygiene, diet and nutrition, and recipes for the preparation of some general cure-alls including purgatives and enemas. The diseases covered in the first part include those arising from the blood, such as continual fevers, as well as other kinds of fevers arising from cholic, “pestilence” or plague, pox, and scurvy.
The author of the second dialogue – a continuation of the first – is given as the medical translator Simon Hobbes, who was described in a work of 1610 as being a medical student himself; it is the Student who does most of the talking in these dialogues, in response to prompts from the Doctor. Hobbes’s work is accompanied, as in the first edition, by a definition of various diseases and accompanying “antidotary” containing recipes for cures. The third dialogue, appearing here for the first time, is also anonymous, again dealing with various ailments such as melancholy and giving their cures. The whole is dedicated to London physicians including the herbalist John Gerard (d. 1612).
STC 24578; Wellcome 5149; not in Osler or Heirs of Hippocrates.