Dionisio Andrea Sancassani - Aforismi generali della cura delle ferite col modo del magati - 1713

Full limp parchment binding with ties visible. Title and author handwritten on the spine on an orange paper label applied.

1 blank sheet, [8], 135, 99

FIRST EDITION of this important medical work published in Venice in 1713 by the physician Dionisio Andrea Sancassani. The text is a collection and revision of the revolutionary surgical principles of Cesare Magati (1579–1647), professor in Ferrara and author of the monumental treatise De rara medicatione vulnerum (1616). Sancassani structured this popular manual into four Centuries of aphorisms, extracting the key concepts from Magati’s Latin text and integrating them with his own clinical experience. The choice of the aphoristic form (short, incisive, prescriptive phrases) was intended to make these rules easily memorizable by cerusics (barber-surgeons) and less educated surgeons, who often did not read academic Latin. Complete with letters, annotations and observations.

Capitulum and final initials. Ex libris at the guard and on the first blank leaf. Some handwritten notes in an ancient hand in the margins. Fading stain at the top of the first 30 leaves; another stain, darkened, at the lower margin extending from p. 60 to the end of the volume, expanding. Woodworm tracks along the lower margin in the second half of the volume. Overall in fair condition, nevertheless complete in text and usable.