Secrets of medicine and chemical philosophy. Rouen, Nicolas L'Oyselet, 1643. Small in-8, olive morocco, triple gilt fillet, decorated spine, fillet on cups, inside lace, gilt edges (Binding from the 18th century). Last edition of this precious collection of hermetic remedies, illustrated with about forty woods in the text showing furnaces, athanors, horns, stills and other chemical and alchemical instruments.
This work by the Dijon physician Jean Liébaut (1535-1596) is a translation, or rather an adaptation in French, of the second part of Conrad Gesner's Thesaurus de remedis secretis, published in 1569, four years after the death of the Swiss naturalist.
In this collection, Liébaut offers a synthesis of the major works carried out over the last three centuries on distillation techniques and their medical applications, detailing "several ways of preparing drinking gold according to the methods of Ramon Lulle, of Paracelsus, Gesner's gold oil, gold of life or sun powder... "(Caillet).
Its publication in 1573 marked the beginning of the use of chemical remedies in France. It also testifies to the influence of Paracelsian medicine in France from that time on.
Pleasant specimen in olive morocco from the 18th century.
It could be Mirabeau's copy (1791, n°1590), described in green morocco in his catalogue, according to a modern annotation on a guard. As far as we know, the revolutionary did not possess an ex-libris, unlike his father, the economist.
From the Max Cointreau library, with ex-libris.
Discreet restoration on a bit, back passed to the tawny without separating the copy, freckles.
Caillet, II, n°6680 - Ferguson, II, 36 - Duveen, 359.
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