LESPLEIGNEY (Thibault) Lot n° 11

Dispensarium medicinarum [...]. S.l., 1538 [at colophon] : Tours, Mathieu Chercelée, February 1538. Small elongated in-12, havana morocco, framed with double gilt fillets, spine decorated in the same way with gilt title throughout, interior roulette, gilt edges (Modern binding in the 17th century taste). Original edition, of great rarity, of the first practical manual written by an apothecary. Issued from the presses of Mathieu Chercelée, one of the first typographers of Tours, the edition is printed in small gothic characters with 34 lines per page. The title is set in a frame consisting of four woodcut borders. Born in Vendôme in 1496, Lespleigney was first known as a supplier to the armies of François I during the Italian campaign against Charles V. Converted to Protestantism around 1544, he left his apothecary's shop in Tours to go into exile in Geneva, where he was accepted as an inhabitant of the city, and practiced his profession there until his death in 1550. Lespleigney had a genius idea when he published, in a convenient format, a collection of formulas used in 1538, a distant precursor of the Codex medicamentarius. [...] Lespleigney is not without merit, for he was the first French apothecary to write didactic treatises for the use of his colleagues [......]; he was also the first author to deal in French with benzoin, a relatively new product in 1537; finally, he contributed, along with André Vésale, to the introduction into therapeutics of a new drug, squine, which had only been known since 1535 (Dorveaux, Notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de Thibault Lespleigney, 1898). The work, which was very successful at the time, contains 247 formulas of pharmaceutical preparations classified according to the route of administration, their consistency, the galenic strengths, etc. Small hole removing some letters on leaves H2 to H5 (filled in for the last one). Two holes on the title, one deleting a letter in the author's name. Restoration on the edge of the last leaf.