Milestones of Science Books

FLUDD, Robert.

Medicina catholica, seu mysticum artis medicandi sacrarium. [Tomus I, tractatus I] / Sophiae cum moria certamen, in quo: lapis Lydius a falso structore, Fr. Marino Mersenno . . . reprobatus, examinat.

Frankfurt am Main: C. Rötel for W. Fitzner, 1629.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #003473

Two parts in two volumes. Folio (313 x 194 mm). [20], 241 [1]; [6], 118, [2] pp., including engraved printer's device on first title, 24 engraved illustrations in text (22 in first and 2 in second part, some full-page), woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces. Bound without the two initial blanks, the Sophiae as often without the table (found bound in between p.18 and 19). Signatures: §² )(⁴ 2):(⁶ A-2H⁴, a-p⁴. Modern bindings re-using antiphonary manuscript on vellum with finely painted Fleuronné initials as cover material, modern endpapers. The paper somewhat browned as usual due to inferior paper stock used, repaired clean tear to first title, A1 with minor fraying of fore-edge. Provenance: inscribed on first title "ad usum P. Palladii". A very good copy. ----

I. FIRST EDITION of the first part of Fludd's Medicina Catholica and complete in its own right (the other parts were published separately in 1631). In 1629 and 1631, Fludd had his four treatises on medicine printed, which constituted the first and only volume (the publication of the second was aborted) of the Medicina catholica: 1. Medicina catholica, Sanitatis mysterium (1629), 2. Pulsus (1631?), 3. Integrum morborum mysterium (1631), 4. Katholicon medicorum katoptron (1631). In these works, Fludd evokes the vital role of the sun and its central place within the universe, and insists at length on the parallel between the solar star and the human heart. According to him, the movement of blood in the human body mimics that of the sun in the macrocosm. He exposes his mystical theories on blood circulation in his treatise Anatomiae amphitheatrum, which prefigure the experiments of William Harvey published in 1628 in De Motu cordis. A few years later, Fludd published his Pulsus and became the first to ardently defend his colleague's ideas: Fludd was trained anatomist and had watched Harvey carry out dissections at the Royal College of Physicians. In his later writings he referred to those dissections, and he was the first to support Harvey's De motu cordis in print, thinking that the views of his friend confirmed his own cosmological concept of the circulation of the blood (see DSB).
Bibliography: VD 17, 12:167343Z; NLM/Krivatsy 4139; Osler 2627; Gardner 227; DSB V, p.48.
II. FIRST EDITION. The Sophiae cum moria certamen can be regarded as an appendix to the Medicina catholica. "Fludd and the Hermeticists were attacked by Mersenne in the 'Quaestiones celeberrimae in Genesim...' (Paris 1623) to which he replied in the 'Sophiae cum moria certamen'" (DSB). Another appendix to the Medicina catholica, the Summum bonum, separately pulished in 1629 and of which Fludd denied authorship, is not included here.
Bibliography: VD 17 12:167461C; NLM/ Krivatsy 4139; Gardner 232, DSB V, p.48. - Visit our website to see more images!

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