Mar 16, 2006 - Sale 2072

Sale 2072 - Lot 182

Price Realized: $ 2,300
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
SHIPBOARD SURGERY AND ALCHEMY WOODALL, JOHN. The Surgeons Mate; or, Military & Domestique Surgery. 4 (of 5) engraved plates; woodcut allegorical representation of Mercury on page 225; woodcut astrological and alchemical symbols on pages 248-60; folding letterpress table; lacks the frontispiece equestrian portrait of charles i. [36], 29, [9], 31-98, 144-275, [1]; [12], 301-412, [11] pages, including engraved title (trimmed with loss of imprint and mounted on verso of front free endpaper). Folio, later 18th-/early 19th-century 1/2 calf with morocco lettering pieces, spine ends chipped, front cover detached; contents darkened along edges, occasional minor soiling or foxing. Bookplate of G. N. J. Sommer, M.D. London: Rob. Young for Nicholas Bourne, 1639
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Second edition, enlarged, of a 1617 manual for naval surgeons by the first surgeon general of the East India Company, also reprinting his 1628 Viaticum, on treating gunshot wounds, plague, and gangrene. "Woodall's is . . . the earliest comprehensive clinical account of scurvy to prescribe lemon juice for its prevention and cure . . . The Surgeons Mate also reflects his keen interest in both theoretical and practical Paracelsian iatrochemistry and chemical medicines. A 78-page section on alchemy, written for novice ship surgeons in the 1617 edition, is expanded in the second with an extra 12-page essay entitled 'Certain fragments concerning chirurgerie and alchymie,' supplemented by an excellent table of alchemical symbols and a glossary of alchemical terms" (ODNB). STC 25964.