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INFLUENTIAL WORK ON MEDICAL PLANTS IN ASIA & AMERICA
IN ITALIAN TRANSLATION, WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
ACOSTA, Cristóbal de. Trattato Della Historia, Natura, et Virtu delle Droghe Medicinali, & altri semplici rarissimi, che vengono portati dalle Indie Orientali in Europa,...
Venice, Francesco Ziletti, 1585. 4to. With woodcut printer's device (one of Ziletti's comet devices with the motto 'Inter omnis'), 45 nearly full-page woodcuts of plants, 2 of two Indian elephants and 72 historiated and floral woodcut initials of 4-6 lines. Some of the woodcuts of the plants (leaves) show some traces of contemporary colouring. Contemporary limp vellum with title in ink on spine, recased with new endpapers.
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First and only edition of the Italian translation of an influential illustrated botanical work on the plants of the East Indies and America by Cristóbal de Acosta, who had published his original Spanish work with the title Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias orientales ('Treatise of the drugs and medicines of the East Indies') in Burgos in 1578.
Cristóbal Acosta (Cristóvão da Costa; ca. 1515-1594) was a Jesuit Portuguese doctor, natural historian and physician, who is considered a pioneer in the study of plants from the Orient, especially their use in pharmacology. Together with the apothecary Tomé Pires he is one of the major names of Indo-Portuguese medicine. The Acosta crater on the Moon is named in his honour. Many years he studied the local flora in Goa, especially concentrating on plants which could be of potential use as drugs and was thereby much inspired by Garcia da Orta's unillustrated Coloquios dos simples e drogas he cousas medicinais da India (Goa, 1563). The present work by Acosta "has been called little more than a translation of the Coloquios, but his adaptation clearly surpasses the earlier work in its systematic, first-hand observations of both East and West Indian plants and its illustrations after Acosta's own accurate drawings" (Norman Library).
Among the Asian plants which are described are ginger, cinnamon, pepper, nutmeg, opium and cardamom. American plants described are pineapple, sugar, cane, rubber, and the "Indian fig" of Peru. At the end (pp. 320-42), after the section on opium, is a treatise on the Indian elephant: 'Trattato dell'elefante & delle sue qualità', illustrated with two magnificent woodcuts of an Indian elephant.
Parts of the work were later translated into Latin by Charles de l'Ecluse (Carolus Clusius), eventually to be included in his illustrated compendium Exoticorum libri decem (1605).
Good copy. Binding slightly damaged.
