Milestones of Science Books

PALISSY, Bernard.

Le moyen de devenir riche.

Paris: Robert Fouet, 1636.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002697

8vo (165 x 108 mm). [16], 255 (i.e. 205), [3]; [16], 526 pp., including blank N4 at end of part 1 but lacking final blank Kk8 of part II, woodcut initials and headpieces, pp. 129-179 in part I omitted. Contemporary sprinkled limp vellum, spine with letting piece (boards somewhat wrinkled, soiled and torn, no endpapers bound in). Internally only little browned, occasional spotting, a few paper flaws (affecting a few letters on leaf Cc4 in part II), crease to upper and lower corner of title, filled thin wormtrack in first and second gathering affecting text (but almost invisible), single small wormtrack to lower blank margin of a few other leaves, final text-leaf of part II with fore-edge reinforced, short tear in blank lower margin of Y2. All in all a good, unmarked copy. ----

Goldsmith P 127; Wellcome I, 4699; Honeyman 2394; Ferchl 392; Ward-Carozzi 1718; Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences, pp. 90, 261, & 446-48; Duveen, p. 446; D.S.B. X, p.280, Thorndike V, pp.596-599. "A book of great importance in the history of chemistry and science generally". The only collected edition, containing the two important works "Récepte véritable" (first 1563) and "Discours admirables" (first 1580), all of great rarity. "Palissy first became famous through his technique for making a 'rustic' enameled earthenware, a skill which gained him the appointment of 'inventeur des rustiques figulines du roy'. His 'Discours admirables' gives Palissy's views on a wide array of subjects, the most significant being those on hydrology and paleontology. He recognized the relation between fossils and both living and extinct species, and was one of the first to hold a reasonably correct view of the process of petrification" (Norman 1629 for his "Discours").

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