BULLEIN WILLIAM Bulleins Bulwarke of Defence against all Sic

Sale 2092 - Lot 37

Price Realized: $ 2,160

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000

MANDRAKE AS AN ANESTHETIC BULLEIN, WILLIAM. Bulleins Bulwarke of Defence against all Sicknesse, Soarenesse and Woundes. 24 woodcut illustrations of medicinal plants, 5 of distilling apparatus, and 5 of full-length male figures. [3] (of [4]), 85, [9]; 46, [2]; 43, [9]; 33, [3] leaves, including blanks Q4 (with portion excised) and 3F4; lacks general title (replaced in facsimile). 4 parts in one volume, printed in black letter. Folio, 17th-century sprinkled calf, rebacked, endpapers renewed; some marginal soiling and dampstaining, occasional minor worming in blank margins, scattered early marginalia and scrawls, repair in blank lower margin of C5. London: Thomas Marshe, 1579

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Second edition of an Elizabethan compendium of general medical knowledge presented in dialogue form, originally published in 1562. Topics covered include simple and compound medicines, surgery and wound treatment, diagnostics, dietetics, and the responsibilities of physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries. "Although substantially Galenist in approach, the book contains some of the earliest printed references to Paracelsus and chemical medicines in English medical writing, together with a discussion of a number of mineral and chemical substances and methods of distillation" (ODNB). According to Keys, the account of the nature and properties of mandrake contains "perhaps the first mention of an anesthetic agent in English in a printed medical book": "the iuyce of thys herbe . . . bringeth sleepe, and casteth men into a trans on a deepe terrible dreame." Durling 779; STC 4034; Keys, The History of Surgical Anesthesia, pages 9-10.