ROSITINI, Pietro.

SYPHILIS

ROSITINI, Pietro. Trattato di mal francese.

Venice, Lodovico Avanzi, 1556

£2,750.00

FIRST EDITION. 8vo. pp. [16], 182. Italic letter, little Roman. Printer’s device to title, decorated initials and ornaments. All edges untrimmed, light age yellowing, handful of ll. slightly foxed. A good, clean, wide-margined copy in C20 paper boards, occasional early ms and marginalia.

A good copy of the first edition of this detailed vernacular manual on syphilis. Pietro Rositini (fl. C16) was an Italian physician and author, with his brother Bartolomeo, of the first translation of Aristophanes’ Greek comedies into Italian. ‘Trattato’ is a detailed study of the symptoms of syphilis, using 234 combinations of symptoms clearly based on the author’s extensive first-hand experience, with its causes and treatments. After a short history of the illness and its various names, it continues with a list of symptoms, including falling teeth and nails, alopecia, inflammation of the gums, nails and eyes, blindness, gonorrhoea, and various very fine distinctions defining strands of syphilis and the numerus ways in which it can be contracted, e.g., through kissing, drinking from the same glass or sleeping with infected people. There follow dozens of recipes for remedies such as balms, plasters and syrups, including several sections on Lignum Guaiacum and the root called Chyna, for the treatment of ulcers, toothache or swelling, as well as a specific soap to wash ulcers and crusts, waters to wash one’s teeth and nails, and remedies against sundry types of body aches caused by syphilis. The early annotator numbered (and recalculated to 276) the 234 combinations of symptoms used to diagnose syphilis, and annotated, in Italian, with summaries of Rositini’s theories on ulcers, and even compared on one occasion how the author did some things differently ‘in his time’. An interesting manual, with fine details not usually found in similar works of the time.

Several copies in US.

USTC 853475; Durling 3954; Wellcome I, 5576; Alden 556/39. Not in Heirs of Hippocrates, JFB or Osler.
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