[Provenance Grace Whitney Hoff] Liger - Traité de la Goutte - 1753

LIGER, Charles-Louis (Doctor-Regent of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris)
Treatise on Gout, in which, after making known the characteristic features and the true causes of this disease, the safest means to treat it properly and to cure it radically are indicated.

Paris, at La Veuve Quillau & Nully, 1753 (M. DCC. LIII).

One volume in-12, bound in antique mottled brown calf, spine with raised bands richly decorated with gilded compartments bearing floral motifs and fleurons, red morocco title piece (Trait. de Gout.).

Prestigious Provenances: Armorial bookplate of the famous American bibliophile Grace Whitney Hoff (motto Magnanimiter Crucem Sustine). And engraved bookplate of the Charles de Labouchere collection (motto Passibus citis sed aequis).

Original edition of a major Enlightenment medical treatise dedicated to the “disease of kings and gourmets.” Written by Dr. Charles-Louis Liger, this work synthesizes with pre-modern rigour the clinical understanding, lifestyle hygiene, and physiological treatments of gout in the eighteenth century.

Preserved in its charming period calf binding with gilded compartments of remarkable freshness, this copy is distinguished by an exceptional provenance: it belonged to the great collector Grace Whitney Hoff (whose library of rare works was partly bequeathed to the city of Paris and described in the famous catalog compiled by A. Boinet), as evidenced by its armorial ex-libris, alongside that of the financier and bibliophile Charles de Labouchere.

In the eighteenth century, gout was perceived as much a painful affection as a social marker of excess of good living, champagne, and court life. Dr. Liger was among the first practitioners to denounce the abusive use of charlatan remedies based on opium or colchicum that were very fashionable at the time, instead advocating a forward-thinking dietary approach centered on exercise and moderation — advice that sparked fierce debates within the Faculty of Medicine of Paris.