PIETRO D’ABANO.

Tractatus de Venenis.

      [Colophon:] Rome: [no printer,] 1490. - 4to, 18 unnumbered leaves. Gothic letter, 33 lines. Modern dark unlettered sheep, fine copy. Eighth printing, but the fifth separate edition. The first printed book on toxicology, treating of poisons and their antidotes. "The topics considered in its six main chapters are: the classification of poisons, how they act upon the body, how to guard against them, the effects and cures of a long list of particular poisons, and finally the problem of a panacea or bezoar against all poisons" (Thorndike). The poisons considered are wide ranging, and include arsenic and hemlock, narcotics, and animal poisons. The author makes reference to the loadstone as a poison if taken internally, and to two kinds of magnet (see Mottelay, p. 501, referring to this edition). Pietro d’Abano was born near Padua in 1250, and wrote De venenis in about 1316. First printed with his Conciliator at Mantua in 1472, the same year as Bagellardo’s book on paediatrics, it was one of the first books on a specific medical speciality to be printed. Klebs 774.8. BMC IV, 91. For a full account of this book, and of Pietro d’Abano’s life and other works, see Thorndike, II, pp. 874–947, and for the more bizarre aspects of his life (and death), see the Biographie Générale.