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GESNER ON MEDICINAL DISTILLATION AND WINE-MAKING
GESNER (GESSNER), Conrad. De Remediis Secretis, Liber Physicus, Medicus, & partim etiam Chymicus, & Oeconomicus in Vinorum diversi Saporis Apparatu, Medicis & Pharmacopolis omnibus prćcipuč necessarius, nunc primům in lucem editus.
Zurich, Christopher Froschauer, [1569].
WITH: GESNER, Conrad. De Remediis Secretis, pars secunda: nunc primum opera & studio Caspari Wolphii ... in lucem editus.
(colophon: Zurich, Christopher Froschauer, 1569). 8vo. 2 parts in 1 volume. With Froschauer's woodcut device on both title-pages; 87 small woodcuts in the text; 9 decorative woodcut initial letters (plus 3 repeats) from three series; roman and italic type with an occasional word of Greek; and fleurons. Contemporary vellum.
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The most complete edition of a classic "book of secrets," a collection of recipes for medicines and wine-making, primarily devoted to the distillation of essences from plants, fruits, minerals, etc., the first edition to include both volumes and Wolf's twenty-page appendix. It discusses the materials from which essences were to be distilled and their uses, as well as the techniques involved, and describes and illustrates (in the 87 woodcuts) the remarkably wide variety of glassware, furnaces and other equipment used for distillation.
Conrad Gesner (1516-1565), a Zurich scholar of remarkable breadth who wrote on bibliography, botany, zoology, medicine and pharmacology, published the first volume of his De Remediis Secretis in 1552 under the pseudonym Euonymus Philiatrus. It quickly went through many editions and was translated into French, German, Italian and English by 1559. The second part appeared posthumously, edited by Gesner's student Caspar Wolf (1532-1601), and Froschauer, who printed its first edition, reprinted the first part at the same time with a matching format and typography. The two are often found bound together. The dedication to part two is dated August 1569. Before the end of the year, however, Wolf added an appendix containing three items, and reprinted at least the first and the last few gatherings. The first is a ten-page "Responsio" to the French Physician Antoine Valet's charges, published in 1567, that Wolf's 1565 edition of Viaticum Novum deliberately concealed Jacques Houllier's authorship. The second is Wolf's seven-page "Epistola in Viaticum" from the 1565 edition. And the third is Gesner's three page "Epistola" from the same edition. The second part of De Remediis Secretis was also successful, and was translated into French, English and German by 1583.
With the owner's signature on the title-page of the Augsburg physician and medical author Veit Riedlin (1628-1668), and a couple brief passages underlined in ink. In very good condition, complete with the two blank leaves and with good margins (the foredge nearly untrimmed) and with only occasional marginal water stains or spotting. A thoroughly illustrated classic of medicinal distillation and wine-making.
