NICOLO' LEONICENO

DE SERPENTIBUS OPUS SINGULARE AC EXACTISSIMUM. (COLOPHON: IMPRESSUM BONONIAE PER JOANNEM ANTONIUM IUNIOREM DE BENEDICTIS, ANNO DOMINI 1518, DIE XXV NOVEMBRI).

      4to. 54 unn. ll. With large printer's mark on last leaf. XVIII century boards. Ex-dono of Count Leonardo Trissino (a Venetian nobleman and friend of the famous poet Leopardi) from the Italian writer Girolamo Negrini. Some notes in a XVI century hand. An excellent copy. First edition. The first section, contained in the first seven leaves and dealing with vipers, had been published between 1497 and 1500, probably by Aldus. The rest of the book is in its first appearance. Nicolo' Leoniceno (Vicenza 1428 - Ferrara 1524) was a physician and the descendant of a noble family. He studied in Padua and traveled to England before settling again in Italy, first in Padua and then in Ferrara, where he died in old age. The most important contributions of Leoniceno was the establishment of a medical school based on the Greek classics depurated from their Arabic interpretations and superfetations, which led to a system which was, in his opinion, highly inefficient and even dangerous for human life. To do so he revived the Galenic medicine on the original texts, and made Ferrara the main center of Galenic renaissance, teaching to Antonio Musa Brasavola and influencing Giovan Battista De Monte. He published several polemical books against his detractors and a famous tract on the errors occurring in Plinius, where he could demonstrate the lack of criticism shown by this author in several occasions. The present work on snakes contains in a nutshell all what was known on these animals during the first part of the XVI century. Leoniceno collects his information from authors active in science and medicine such as Aristoteles, Hippocrates and Avicenna (Ibn-Sina), but also from different literary sources as Herodotus and Lucan. He checks every fact not against the authority of the ancients, which is often challenged, but rather on the basis of the experience made by himself and his contemporaries. Subjects such as the composition of medicaments where snake poison was an ingredient, the effect of poisoning, the poisoning power of different species, counterpoisons and anatomy of snakes are discussed. The book is introduced by a dedicatory letter to Lucrezia Borgia, in which allusions to her sulfuric fame can be read, but, more simply, a devout homage to the Granduchess of Ferrara in her position of protectress of sciences and medicine. A letter to the Venetian physician Alessandro Agatimero, containing recent observations on the vipers, concludes the book. ? DSB VIII, page 248-250; Adams L-501; Wellcome 3740; Ceresoli 323.