Giuseppe Quercetano - Le ricchezze della riformata farmacopea, Trattato della preparazione spagirica - 1646

- The Riches of the Pharmacopoeia of Mr. Giuseppe Quercetano

- Treatise on Spagyrical Preparation. On Mineral, Animal, and Vegetable Medicines and Their Use

[16], 264. 4* quarto

Book in good condition, leather cover worn at the spine, pages fresh and crisp, with no signs of humidity or gore, light worming from page 175 with marginal loss of text, see photo 10.

First book 226 pp

It is a manual intended mainly for doctors and apothecaries, the ancestors of today’s pharmacists. The frontispiece lists numerous categories of medicines:

* Distilled waters, decoctions, medicated wines, and syrups.
* Pills, laxatives, emetics, and clysters.
* Aromatic preparations, preserves and medicinal tablets.
* Theriacs and antidotes, including those then used against the plague.
* Sedative medicines and those containing opium.
* Extracts, essences, oils, and salts

Second book 38 pp

It is a treatise on alchemical medicine and pharmacy, devoted to how to prepare and use medicines derived from minerals, animals, and vegetables.

The frontispiece bears the Treatise of the Preparatione Spagirica of Gioseffo Quercetano, i.e. Joseph Du Chesne, translated from Latin by Giovanni Maria Ferro and printed in Venice by the Guerigli in 1646.

Spagyria was the application of alchemical techniques to the preparation of medicines: to separate, purify, and extract from natural substances the components deemed curative, by operations such as distillation and calcination. The work belongs to the medical tradition linked to Paracelsus.

Joseph Du Chesne, generally dated 1546–1609, was a French physician from Lectoure, in Gascony. He studied medicine in Basel, earning his doctorate in 1575, and practiced in Geneva before settling in Paris in 1598 as physician to Henry IV of France.

He was a supporter of Paracelsus’s doctrines and of the use of chemical preparations in medicine. He also had diplomatic and literary activities: he wrote poems and plays, in addition to medical treatises published under the name Quercetanus.