Information

SEA SALTS NOT WHALE SPERM

CORDUS, Valerius and Conrad GESNER.  De Halosantho seu Spermate Ceti Vulgo Dicto, Liber.
Zürich, [Jacob Gesner], 1566. 8vo. With a large woodcut publisher’s device on the title-page and 1 woodcut initial letter. Modern half vellum.

Orders and Information

€ 2000

(3), 37 ll. Adams, G-522/[5]; Durling 1033; Hoover 347/[5]; Osler 646/[5]; Sinkankas, Gemology 2366/5; Sparrow, Milestones of Science 82/[7]; Ward 906/[5]; Wellcome 2804/[5]; Wellisch, A-63/[5]; not in Allen, Cete and Sirenia.
First and only edition of a treatise on certain salts sometimes found in crystaline “efflorescences” from the surface of the sea, which Dioscorides and Galen had recommended for the treatment of skin diseases. The Hessian doctor and botanist Valerius Cordus (1515-1544) left this treatise unpublished at his premature death, and Conrad Gesner added a preface and “Corollarium” for its posthumous publication in his compilation, De Omni Rerum Fossilium Genere , but the treatise with corollarium is separately signed and foliated for separate publication as well. Gessner’s corollarium, slightly longer than the treatise itself, refutes the popular notion that these salts were the sperm of whales.
A very good copy with generous margins. A curious medical and mineralogical treatise, with an amusing link to whales.