Milestones of Science Books

RHIJNE, Willem ten (TEN RHYNE).

Dissertatio de arthritide: Mantissa schematica: De acupunctura: et orationes tres, I. De chymiac ac botaniac antiquitate & dignitate: II. De physiognomia: III. De monstris.

London: R. Chiswell, 1683.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #003223

8vo (183 x 110 mm). [46], 334 pp. Signatures: A⁸ a-b⁸ B-Y⁸. Title page with small woodcut vignette, 6 folding engraved plates, of which 5 showing acupuncture points, final blank Y8. Lacking the engraved frontispiece portrait only. Contemporary calf, expertly rebacked, spine with 5 raised bands, richly gilt and with gilt-lettered morocco label (little rubbing to extremities), red and brown sprinkled edges, original endpapers. Text little browned only, occasional minor spotting, small worm track at blank gutter, short tears at fold of plates. Nice copy. ----

Norman 2062; Garrison-Morton 6374.10; NLM/Krivatsy 9603 (imperfect copy); Waller 9518; Wellcome IV, p. 517; Wing R-1326. - ¬VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF THE EARLIEST PUBLISHED TREATISE ON CHINESE AND JAPANESE MEDICINE WRITTEN BY A EUROPEAN. Our copy of the rare variant with the two-printers title-page including Arnoldus Leers of Den Hague and without the author's portrait as often. The first edition was published simultaneously in London and Den Hague. From 1674 to 1676 Ten Rhijne served as resident physician at Deshima, the trading station of the Dutch East India Company at Nagasaki Bay, and the only channel for the exchange of scientific information between Europe and Japan during the Floating Kingdom’s two centuries of self-imposed isolation. "Ten Rhijne’s treatise provided the Western world with its first detailed descriptions of Japanese and Chinese medicine, including acupuncture and moxibustion ... Ten Rhijne correctly described acu-tracts but confused them with blood-vessels, a misidentification that persisted in later Western studies of acupuncture ... he also attempted to find a link between Chinese medicine and the Western Galenic-Aristotelian medical tradition by translating 'Yang' as 'innate heat' and 'Yin' as 'radical moisture'" (Norman 2062). The engravings are the first Western illustrations of the acu-points (those of Cleyer's Specimen medicinac sinicac (1682) show acu-tracts only). Although published a year later than Cleyer's better-known compilation of Boym's translations of Chinese medical texts, ten Rhijne's treatise is possibly the more important of the two works, as it represents the first attempt by a European to reconcile the widely divergent philosophies of Asian and European medicine. Visit our website to see more images!

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