Preceeding Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy by 11 years

FERRAND, Jacques.

Traicte de l'essence et guerison de l'amour, ou de la melancholie erotique.

Toulouse: Veuve de J. Colomiez & R. Colomiez, 1610.

1st Edition. Hardcover. 12mo - over 6¾ - 7¾" tall. Very Good. Item #003814

1610 [1612]. 12mo (140 x 80 mm). [16], 222, [2] pp. Woodcut headpieces and initials; errata on recto of final unnumbered leaf L4; the printing date "M DC X" on the title-page changed to 1612 by addition of a hand-printed "II". Signatures: A⁸ B-K¹² L⁴. Pages 137, 200-216 mispaginated 136, 100-116. Bound in 18th-century full calf, spine with richt gilt tooling and gilt-lettered morocco label, red-dyed edges, marbled endpapers (rehinged and recornered, extremities slightly rubbed). Preserved in custom clamshell box. Light even browning internally, occasional minor spotting, short fore-margin with printed marginalia just touched on several pages and on ca. 7 pages shaved up to one letter (pp. 123, 128, 134, 178-180, 204), tiny hole in leaf E7 costing two letters each side, signatures on pp. 219 and 221 partly shaved. Provenance: De Gironcourt (old ownership inscription to title, engraved armorial bookplate to front pastedown). In all a very good, clean and crisp copy. ----

FIRST EDITION, AND OF UTMOST RARITY, of Jacque Ferrand's treatise on the psychiatry of lovesickness and obsessional pathologies, published 11 year before Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. This is the second issue, in which only the original date of publication (1610) was changed by hand to 1612.
William Osler in his Bibliotheca Osleriana remarks on p. 435 for Ferrand's 1623 edition that "Burton was probably accused of plagiarizing the work since he explains that it did not come to his hands before 1628" (Osler).
Jacques Ferrand (1575-ca.1623) is considered a pioneer of French psychiatry. His treatise on erotic melancholy was banned and burned by the Inquisition in 1620. It was rewritten by Ferrand in order to conform to the wishes and viewpoint of the inquisitional tribunal and the second edition appeared in 1623 under the title "De la maladie d'amour ou melancholie erotique". From philosophical definitions of love to pharmaceutical remedies, the work is also considered a veritable encyclopedia of love melancholy during the Renaissance.
"While the medical description of love melancholy in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries remained faithful to its predecessors, the volume of writings increased dramatically, with such writers as Ferrand or Burton devoting hundreds of pages to its specific aetiology, symptoms, diagnosis, prognosis and, of course, therapy. Predisposition to the disease, according to the medical literature of the period, is linked to the dominance of blood (a sanguine tendency), which means the body is inclined to moisture and heat. This high level of blood in the human body was believed to produce a natural inclination to all the passions, especially erotic love. A natural inclination of the body to melancholy, however, cannot in itself bring about love melancholy. [. . .] Love melancholy has both physical and psychological symptoms, which Ferrand lists briefly (before providing details of each): pale and wan complexion, joined by a slow fever . palpitations of the heart, swelling of the face, depraved appetite, a sense of grief, sighing, causeless tears, irresistible hunger, raging thirst, fainting, oppression, suffocation, insomnia, headaches, melancholy, epilepsy, madness, uterine fury, satyriasis, and other pernicious symptoms. . ." (Altbauer-Rudnik).
The first edition is extremely rare, probably due to the fact that the work was placed on the index of the Inquisition (and printed copies destroyed accordingly) until a corrected version appeared in 1623. No copy is recorded at auction according to RBH. We can trace only a single copy of the first issue in public libraries (Médiathèque José Cabanis, Toulouse, USTC no. 6807985) and 4 copies of the second (1612) issue (Bibl. municipale, Rouen; Médiathèque José Cabanis, Toulouse; BnF Paris; Houghton Library of Harvard Univ.).
References: M. Altbauer-Rudnik, Love, Madness and Social Order: Love Melancholy in France and England in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries. In: Gesnerus 63 (2006), pp. 33-45; Brunet II, 1228 f.; Cioranescu, 17e siècle 29965; Gay-Lemonnyer I, 802 (ed. vague); Semeleigne, I, 47; Hunter-M. 118 (English ed.. 1640); NLM/Krivatsy 4024 (1623 ed. only), Osler 4804 (1623 ed. only, with remark of Burton's plagiarism case), Wellcome 2219 (1640 English ed. only), Waller 2999 (1623 ed. only). - Visit our website to see more images!

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