Details
SANTORIO, Santorio (1561-1636). Commentaria in artem medicinalem Galeni. Latin translation by Niccol Leoniceno. Venice: Giacoppo Antonio Somasco 1612.
2o (322 x 215 mm). 3 parts in one, part 3 separately titled, signed and paginated, first title printed in red and black, printer's large woodcut device on both titles, double column, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. (+2.3 [dedication leaf and leaf of commendatory verse] detached, worm track in gutter in parts 1-2 catching a few letters, brwoning and mostly marginal dampstaining in part 3.) Modern vellum. Provenance: Purchase note dated 1620 on front flyleaf; a few early and later marginalia.
FIRST EDITION, VERY RARE. Santorio was the founder of metabolic research, and was the first to use precision instruments for quantitative physiological studies, an innovation that led his name to be linked with Harvey in the 17th and 18th centuries as a co-founder of the "new medicine". As professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua, Santorio "was required to present and comment upon the Ars parva of Galen, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the first book of the Canon of Ibn Sina [Avicenna]. This obligation led him to publish most of his own views in the restricted form of scholarly commentaries on these three works. Cautious and introverted, Santorio preferred to express himself through allusions and to envelop his bold and original ideas in a thick layer of conventional erudition" (DSB). Later editions contain Santorio's description of his thermometer, similar to Galileo's open-air thermoscope, which Santorio may have known of, but with the addition of a scale with fixed reference points. Garrison-Morton 572.2; NLM/Krivatsy 10246; Norman 1889.
2
FIRST EDITION, VERY RARE. Santorio was the founder of metabolic research, and was the first to use precision instruments for quantitative physiological studies, an innovation that led his name to be linked with Harvey in the 17th and 18th centuries as a co-founder of the "new medicine". As professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Padua, Santorio "was required to present and comment upon the Ars parva of Galen, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, and the first book of the Canon of Ibn Sina [Avicenna]. This obligation led him to publish most of his own views in the restricted form of scholarly commentaries on these three works. Cautious and introverted, Santorio preferred to express himself through allusions and to envelop his bold and original ideas in a thick layer of conventional erudition" (DSB). Later editions contain Santorio's description of his thermometer, similar to Galileo's open-air thermoscope, which Santorio may have known of, but with the addition of a scale with fixed reference points. Garrison-Morton 572.2; NLM/Krivatsy 10246; Norman 1889.