De Decoratione Liber.
Venice, P. Meietti 1585.
4to (234 x 181 mm.). [x], 38 leaves. Woodcut title Meietti device.
Contemporary limp vellum (soiled, slightly wormed), spine gilt-lettered with the author, title, place and date (old repair), evidence of four pigskin ties.
First Edition: ONE OF THE EARLIEST TREATISES ON COSMETIC MEDICINE. In twenty-nine chapters, On Adornment addresses beauty, the lack of it and ways to achieve it. It treats body size, skin complexion, haircare, blemishes, moles, varicose veins, sunspots, scars, warts, boils, calluses, wrinkles, sycosis, cutaneous horns, finger- and toenail disorders, body odor and bad breath. Each chapter presents a flaw or defect, explains its causes and suggests medical or cosmetic solutions. “Mercurialis’s writing…brings to the foreground a very simple point — that as well as being expected to…diagnose complex diseases, physicians were frequently confronted by ailments, blemishes, and cosmetic disfigurements…that they were expected to treat…as if they were diseases” (Murphy). The book draws on ancient authorities as well as contemporary practitioners, and IT INCLUDES THE EARLIEST REFERENCE IN PRINT TO TAGLIACOZZI’S GROUNDBREAKING RHINOPLASTY PROCEDURE (f. 23).
Mercuriale practiced and taught medicine at Padua, where his student, Giulio Mancini (1559-1630), compiled his lectures and edited the text for this edition. The printer issued it both individually (as here) and as part two of the second edition of Mercuriale’s De morbis cutaneis. A nice copy (a few light marginal waterstains).
¶Murphy, “Skin and Disease in Early Modern Medicine” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 94 (2020) 179-214; Erdmann, My Gracious Silence 181; Mazzola & Foss, Plastic Surgery: An Illustrated History 111 & 362; Durling, A Catalogue of Sixteenth Century Printed books in The National Library of Medicine 3095; EDIT16 CNCE 30738.
Price: $8,800.00