Chirurgia è Graeco in Latinum conversa, Vido Vidio Florentino interprete

Paris: Pierre Gaultier, 1544. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. 30 April 1544. Folio (363 x 241 mm). [36], 533 [1] pp., 210 woodcut text illustrations (of which 30 full-page), ornamental metalcut initials, bound without final blank leaf L6. Roman and Greek types. Signatures: aa8 bb10; a-z8 A-I8 K-L6 (-L6). Bound in later green-dyed reverse calf, spine with 5 raised bands, blind-ruling and tooling of boards and spine, spine with gilt-lettered brown morocco label, red-sprinkled edges, later endpapers (spine sunned, extremities slightly rubbed, corners bumped). Text very crips and bright with very minor browning in places, some leaves with light damp-staining to lower corner and head near gutter, oversize woodcuts on pp. 497, 500 and 502 trimmed close to image at fore-margin. Provenance: Malan de Merindol library (woodcut bookplate to front-pastedown). A very good, tall copy with all the oversize woodcuts intact. ----

RARE FIRST EDITION, VARIANT WITH PRINTER'S WOODCUT DEVICE ON TITLE, of Guido Guidi's translation of Nicetas' Codex into Latin. One of the most beautiful scientific books of the Renaissance, comparable only to Vesalius's De fabrica (1543) and Estienne's De dissectione (1545), this edition includes Latin translations of treatises on surgery by Hippocrates (De ulceribus, De fistulis, and De vulneribus capitis), Galen (De fracturis, De articulis, De officina medici, and De fasciis), Oribasius (De laquis and De machinamentis), and others, with commentaries by Galen and other ancient writers. Hippocrates' treatise on dislocations and Soranus' work on bandages are illustrated with woodcuts, many of them full-page, which illustrate the treatments discussed in the text. Both texts and illustrations derive from a tenth-century illustrated Greek manuscript compiled by the Byzantine physician Nicetas. Brought to Italy by Janus Lascaris in 1495, this codex (now Florence, Laur. Plut. LXXIV, 7) was used by the Florentine physician Guido Guidi for the preparation of this Latin translation. Guidi, a native of Florence and grandson of the painter Domenico del Ghirlandaio, was physician to King Francis I of France and the first professor of medicine at the Collge de France (1542-48). The woodcuts, probably by Francois Jollat, were based on drawings by Primaticcio and Jean Santorinos that were copied in turn from the tenth-century codex. These drawings survive, together with Guidi's reference to the artists, in the dedication manuscript of the translation presented to Francis I (Paris, BNF lat. 6866; see H. Omont, Collection des chirurgiens grecs avec dessins attribus au Primatice, Paris n.d.). The origin of the designs has been traced back to the first century B.C.; they were undoubtedly transmitted directly from Antiquity to Byzantium and so may be regarded as embodying the genuine Hippocratic tradition of surgical practice (H. Schne, Apollonius von Kitium, Leipzig 1896).
"In 1542, Guidi presented an illustrated copy of this manuscript, along with his own Latin translation (likewise illustrated), to Francois 1 of France [...] Guidi had his Latin translation printed by Pierre Gaultier, a printer residing at the castle of Benvenuto Cellini, where Guidi also lived during the time he spent in Paris. The Chirurgia was the only one of Guidi's works published during his lifetime. The exquisite woodcuts of apparatus adorning Guidi's text are copies of the drawings in Guidi's Latin manuscript, which have been claimed, on the basis of a brief reference in the manuscript, to be the work of the Italian mannerist Francesco Primaticcio... References and literature: Dibner 118; Norman 954; Garrison-Morton 4406.1; Heirs of Hippocrates 263; Mortimer (French) 542; NLM/Durling 2204; Wellcome I, 6596; Choulant-Frank 211 f.; Cushing G445; Osler 155; M.Hirst, Salviati illustrateur de Vidus Vidius, Revue de l'Art 6(1969), pp. 19-28; Kellett, The school of Salviati and the illustrations to the Chirurgia of Vidis Vidius, 1544, Medical history 2 (1958), pp. 264-268. Visit our website for further reading and images!