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BONACCIOLI, Ludovico (1475-1536). Enneas mulieribus. [Ferrara: Lorenzo Rossi, 1502-03].
First edition of one of the earliest printed works devoted to women’s health, written by the personal physician to Lucrezia Borgia and dedicated to her as duchess of Ferrara. The Pâris d’Illins-Heber copy, finely bound, with wide margins and handsome, extended chapter headings in capital letters. Rare: aside from the c. dozen copies in European institutions, no copy is recorded as having been sold in the past century by RBH/ABPC on-line.
Folio (276 x 190mm). Roman types, initial spaces with guide-letter. 18th-century French red morocco gilt, sides with triple fillet border, spine with small bird and other tools, title directly lettered, gilt edges. Provenance: early annotations, one dated 1554 recording the birth septuplets -- Antoine Pâris, comte de Sampigny (1668-1733; armorial bookplate dated 1721) -- Antoine Pâris d’Illins (1746-1809; sale London 1791, lot 139 ['the first that was printed on the subject of female diseases’], £2.16 to:) – Seguin Henry Jackson (1752-1816, medical doctor; sale London, 20 Jan. 1817) – Richard Heber (sale, Evans part VI, March 1835, lot 652).
Although some aspects of women’s health were included in earlier printed medical works, only Ortolff van Bayerlandt’s gynaecological treatise of 1495 (Goff O-113) preceded the Enneas mulieribus in print as devoted wholly to the subject. It is a compendium of physiology of pregnancy and childbirth, treating of female anatomy, fertility, miscarriage, childbirth, and breast-feeding, among other topics, and gives practical advice for the first month of infant care. Bonaccioli cites Hippocrates and Galen, and an early attentive reader identifies the relevant aphorism cited and adds further substantive annotations.
The Ferrarese physician Ludovico Bonaccioli joined the household of Lucrezia Borgia in 1502, soon after her third marriage, to Alfonso d’Este; he treated both husband and wife, serving principally as Lucrezia’s obstetrician. Given Lucrezia’s sexual appetite (her passionate affair with her most famous lover, Pietro Bembo, from 1503 is conveyed in their published love letters), Bonaccioli’s choice of Lucrezia as his dedicatee was as appropriate as it was effective in securing his own position as her favourite doctor.
The edition was once thought to be 15th-century but is now dated 1502-03 based on the author’s arrival at court in 1502 and the death of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia’s father named in the preface, in August 1503. H 3458; GW IV, col. 382; IGI I, p.242; BL STC p.117; BSB-Ink B-649; Klebs 193.1; Adams B-2377; EDIT CNCE 6806.
First edition of one of the earliest printed works devoted to women’s health, written by the personal physician to Lucrezia Borgia and dedicated to her as duchess of Ferrara. The Pâris d’Illins-Heber copy, finely bound, with wide margins and handsome, extended chapter headings in capital letters. Rare: aside from the c. dozen copies in European institutions, no copy is recorded as having been sold in the past century by RBH/ABPC on-line.
Folio (276 x 190mm). Roman types, initial spaces with guide-letter. 18th-century French red morocco gilt, sides with triple fillet border, spine with small bird and other tools, title directly lettered, gilt edges. Provenance: early annotations, one dated 1554 recording the birth septuplets -- Antoine Pâris, comte de Sampigny (1668-1733; armorial bookplate dated 1721) -- Antoine Pâris d’Illins (1746-1809; sale London 1791, lot 139 ['the first that was printed on the subject of female diseases’], £2.16 to:) – Seguin Henry Jackson (1752-1816, medical doctor; sale London, 20 Jan. 1817) – Richard Heber (sale, Evans part VI, March 1835, lot 652).
Although some aspects of women’s health were included in earlier printed medical works, only Ortolff van Bayerlandt’s gynaecological treatise of 1495 (Goff O-113) preceded the Enneas mulieribus in print as devoted wholly to the subject. It is a compendium of physiology of pregnancy and childbirth, treating of female anatomy, fertility, miscarriage, childbirth, and breast-feeding, among other topics, and gives practical advice for the first month of infant care. Bonaccioli cites Hippocrates and Galen, and an early attentive reader identifies the relevant aphorism cited and adds further substantive annotations.
The Ferrarese physician Ludovico Bonaccioli joined the household of Lucrezia Borgia in 1502, soon after her third marriage, to Alfonso d’Este; he treated both husband and wife, serving principally as Lucrezia’s obstetrician. Given Lucrezia’s sexual appetite (her passionate affair with her most famous lover, Pietro Bembo, from 1503 is conveyed in their published love letters), Bonaccioli’s choice of Lucrezia as his dedicatee was as appropriate as it was effective in securing his own position as her favourite doctor.
The edition was once thought to be 15th-century but is now dated 1502-03 based on the author’s arrival at court in 1502 and the death of Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia’s father named in the preface, in August 1503. H 3458; GW IV, col. 382; IGI I, p.242; BL STC p.117; BSB-Ink B-649; Klebs 193.1; Adams B-2377; EDIT CNCE 6806.
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