Milestones of Science Books

FABRICI, Girolamo (FABRICIUS AB AQUAPENDENTE, Hieronymus).

De brutorum loquela.

Padua: Lorenzo Pasquati, 1603.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002229

Folio (415 x 277 mm). [6], 27 [1] pp., index bound at beginning. Signatures: pi2 A-D2. Woodcut printer's device on title-page, ornamental woodcut initials and tail-pieces. Title-leave torn at gutter not affecting text. Recent half vellum, new endpapers. A fine, wide-margined copy. Exceedingly rare as here with the title-leave and final blank. ----

FIRST EDITION of Fabrici's treatise on the language of beasts; "a subject very curious in itself, and which has by no means sufficiently attracted notice even in the experimental age. He demonstrates, from the different structure of the organs of speech, that no brute can ever rival man; their chief instrument being the throat, which we uses only for vowel sounds." (H. Hallam, Introduction to the literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, Vol. 4, 1839, p.54-5).
Whereas Fabrici's De locutione et eius instrumentis deals with the vocal organs of man, De brutorum loquela in turn "deals with the comparable, but more limited, activity in animals. 'Bruts' is the term Fabricius uses for 'animals' when he does not mean to include man among them. It is of course entirely appropriate for Fabricius to have separated these two treatments, since man is, as he says, the only animal which does have speech [...] and it is THE feature which so completely differentiates him from other creatures." (A. Wear et al., The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, p.205).

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