Francesco Redi - Opere. A magnificent science set - 1712-1730

(SCIENCES, MEDICINE; BIOLOGY; ILLUSTRATED). FRANCESCO REDI (1626 - 1698)
Opere di Francesco Redi Gentiluomo Aretino, ed Accademico della Crusca. Venezia, per Gio. Gabriello Ertz (1712-30)
§ 8vo, (216 x 136) 7 tomes in 6 volumes: 4 engraved frontispieces, 2 portraits, 2 folding plates, 61 plates (2 of which folding), 12 full-page engravings among the numbered pages. Pp. 554; 674;551;490;370;344;160. Contemporary full vellum binding with author and title gilt-stamped on label on spine; marbled edges,a magnificent copy on crisp paper, perfectly preserved, complete under all respects, including all the original blank leaves. A masterpiece of the XVIIIth century scientific tought and perfect addition to any prominent collectors library.
First Venetian edition, extremely scarce to be found complete, of the collected works of Francesco Redi, physician, naturalist and man of letters, considered among the founders of experimental biology, thanks to his studies on toxicology and parasitology. He published a large number of naturalistic research accounts, which aroused great interest throughout Europe. His Osservazioni intorno alle Vipere, or Observations on Vipers, composed during the years of activity of the Accademia del Cimento (of which Redi was a member) and originally published in 1664 (Firenze, all’insegna della Stella), were the account of the results obtained in a research field of great interest at the court of Tuscany: the study of the effects of poison and the pharmacological-dietary deployment of vipers. The experiments conducted on specimens of vipera aspis L. at the Ducal Pharmacy (superintended by Redi himself), showed that the poisoning resulted from the inoculation through the bloodstream of the stagnant liquid in the sheaths of the reptile teeth, while the poison was completely harmless if ingested. Moreover, the beliefs about the therapeutic virtues traditionally attributed to the viper by-products used for the preparation of theriaca were denied. Of particular importance are also his Esperienze intorno alla Generazione degl’Insetti, or Experiences on the Generation of Insects (or. ed. Firenze, all’insegna della Stella, 1668), in which he refuted the theory of spontaneous generation (the so-called zoogenetic virtue of plants), generally accepted in those days, thanks to a detailed experimental study on the reproduction of flies.
The great season of scientific experimentation was inaugurated in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the researches of the Accademia del Cimento (1657-66), focused on the analysis of physical and chemical phenomena and on barometric and thermometric measurements. Redi, with his medical-biological research was a sort of exception, but the methods established in those years characterized all his production, continued in the following years and culminated with the parasitological research of the 1680s, published in the Osservazioni intorno agli animali viventi che si trovano negli animali viventi, or Observations on Living Animals, that are in Living Animals (or. ed. Firenze, per Piero Matini, all’insegna del Lion d’oro, 1684).
The present edition of Redi’s works is the first, among those published up to the end of 18th century, including his medical and poetical works, as well as the preparatory studies for the drafting of the third edition of the Vocabolario della Crusca (Florence, nella Stamperia dell’Accademia della Crusca, 1691) and a broad selection of his correspondence.
 GAMBA 836; PRANDI 32-34