PORTA, Giovanni Baptista della (1535-1615). De distillatione lib. IX. Rome: Camera Apostolica, 1608.

细节
PORTA, Giovanni Baptista della (1535-1615). De distillatione lib. IX. Rome: Camera Apostolica, 1608.

4o (211 x 158 mm). Laudatory epigrams in Hebrew, Greek, Chaldean, Arabic, Slavonic, and Armenian, each with their Latin translations. Full-page copper-engraved portrait of Porta by I. Laurus, 35 woodcut illustrations in text. (Some minor pale marginal dampstains.) Provenance: Andre L. Simon (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION. Porta's treatise gives the most comprehensive view of the applications of distillation of the period. The work is an expansion of the section on distillation in Book X of the enlarged edition of his Magia naturalis (1589). The nine books deal with the various kinds of distillation: methods of extraction, the preparation of scented distilled waters, oils distilled from resins, oils distilled from woods, the distillation of corrosive mineral acids, the properties of these acids, distillation of alcohol from wine, and the preparation of various ointments. Duveen p. 481; Ferguson II, 216; Partington II, 24; Riccardi I(2), 312; Norman 1725.