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Kircher, Athanasius (1602-1680) Scrutinium Physico-Medicum. Contagiosae Luis, quae Pestis Dicitur.
Rome: Typis Mascardi, 1658.
First edition, quarto, complete, with errata, woodcut papal arms on verso of title, woodcut head- and tail-pieces throughout; early date inscription dated 1666 inside front board; bound in full contemporary German parchment with yapp edges, painted spine label, frayed remnants of fore-edge ties; ex libris William Procter Remington, with bookplate; damage with losses to bottom outside corner of title, water staining throughout, mainly confined to lower corners; 9 x 6 3/4 in.
Garrison & Morton 5118.
After a terrible outbreak of plague in Rome, which killed an estimated 150,000 people and lasted more than a year, Kircher applied his curiosity and microscope to determining the nature of the disease, and how it spreads from person to person. And although the notion of spontaneous generation enervates Kircher's work, he is credited for important original observations. According to Garrison, Kircher "was undoubtedly the first to state in explicit terms the doctrine of ‘contagium vivum' as the cause of infectious disease." Through his microscope, he observed microorganisms and postulated that contagion could be caused by microscopic germs. (For more see John Glassie's "Invisible Little Worms: Athanasius Kircher's Study of the Plague," https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/athanasius-kircher-study-of-the-plague/#ref15.)
