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First edition of a leading medical-pharmaceutical work, with stunning woodcut headpieces and initials

DUPUIS (PUTEANUS), Guillaume.
De medicamentorum quomodocunque purgantium facultatibus, nusquam anteà neque dictis, neque per ordinem digestis libri duo ...
Lyon, Macé Bonhomme, 1552. 4to. With a woodcut device on the title-page no doubt made for this edition (showing Hypocrates and Galenus, with motto, "In omnem terram exivit doctrina eorum"), finely executed arabesque woodcut headpieces and numerous woodcut initials with pictorial decoration (4 series, the two largest especially fine). Contemporary limp vellum with remnants of ties. [8], 179, [1] pp.
€ 6,500
Rare the first edition of a pharmaceutical treatise by the elusive physician Guillaume Dupuis (active 1536-1551) from Blangy in northern France but long settled in Grenoble. "Il ... exerca longtemps la médicine avec une grande réputation ... [et] était en même temps professeur à luniversité de cette ville" (Hoefer). The work was republished in 1554, with a treatise by Cousinot, under the title De occultis pharmacorum purgantium facultatibus. Like most of its kind, it draws heavily on Galen and the Arabic tradition of Mesue.
With several near-contemporary ink owners inscriptions by the pharmacist Joseph Nicolau (some in the device and the first initial); additional 18th-century ink owners inscriptions by Luís Ferrari; numerous ink annotations on the endpapers and throughout. Browning and water stains throughout, occasional mostly marginal worming, several paper defects along the edges. Binding wrinkled and rubbed. Baudrier X, 223; BMC STC French, p. 145; Ferchl 428 ("Leiden" in error); Gültingen VIII, 95, 158; Hoefer XV, 367; NLM WZ 240 ("imperfect: p. 177 mutilated"); USTC 151071; Wellcome 5300; WorldCat 14307014; not in Adams; Durling; Osler; Waller.
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