ELYOT, Sir Thomas

The castell of helth corrected and in some places augmented...

      [London, T. Berthelet] 1541 [1544] 8vo (125 x 89 mm), ff [8] 86 [recte 94, of 96, without colophon leaf or last blank], title within woodcut architectural border, woodcut arms on title verso and A8 verso, black letter, woodcut initials; a few wormholes repaired in blank margins of last few leaves, a very good copy in nineteenth-century mottled calf in an eighteenth-century style by William Pratt, gilt panels, gilt edges. £7500 First published ca 1537, Elyotís Castell of Helth was an immensely popular Tudor handbook of domestic medicine, making accessible classical authorities to an English-speaking and reading audience. This edition contains Elyotís own preface and defence of his work, which in the 1541 edition replaced the dedication to Thomas Cromwell. ëThrough More Elyot may have known Erasmus, and it is likely that he studied medicine with Thomas Linacre; the preface to Elyot's book The Castel of Helth states that when he was twenty years old ìa worshypfull phisition, and one of the most renoumed at that tyme in England, perceyving me by nature inclyned to knowledge, radde unto me the workes of Galeneî and Hippocrates (Elyot, Castel of Helth, sig. A4). More was probably also responsible for introducing Elyot to Hans Holbein the younger, whose drawings of both Thomas Elyot and his wife survive in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle... ë...Elyot's Castel of Helth completes the trilogy of his major works. It is an attempt to summarize the teachings of the ancient Greek and Roman physicians, especially Galen, so that English men and women may understand and regulate their health accordingly. It popularized the theory of the four humours and complexions, which became a basic part of the intellectual make-up of Renaissance Britain, and suggested medicines and treatments for a variety of ailments. Probably based on Elyot's studies with Linacre, it differed from Linacre's own writings, for Linacre translated the works of Galen from Greek to Latin, hoping to make them accessible to doctors but not wishing to allow ordinary men and women to diagnose their own complaints. It was Elyot who provided an accessible handbook in the vernacularí (Stanford Lehmberg in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Provenance: bookplates of Simpson Rostron, Hubert James Cecil Rostron, John Reginald Marriott, Edna and Frank Bradlow, and Haskell Norman; Christieís New York, The Haskell F. Norman Library part I, 18 March 1998, lot 80 STC 7646; Norman 705A