De militis in castris sanitate tuenda. Auctore Luca Antonio Portio Neapolitano. Editio secunda

8vo (172x115 mm). Engraved author's portrait as a frontispiece, [32], 213, [3] pp. Engraved head-piece and initial. Contemporary stiff vellum (slightly soiled and stained). Light foxing and browning, but a good, genuine copy.

Second edition published posthumously and dedicated by the editor Giuseppe Ponzelli to Antonio Pignatelli, from Naples on 1 January 1728. The edition also preserves the original dedication from the first edition, which appeared in Vienna in 1685, addressed by Porzio to Count Rudolf von Rabatta.

Porzio, who had had the opportunity to treat many soldiers from Leopold I's army in Vienna -soldiers who had fought against the Turks- drew interesting conclusions regarding appropriate measures to prevent the outbreak of epidemics in armies. In this work, which is essentially Hippocratic in its conception and in the form in which it was composed, we find a series of observations on dysentery, typhus, intermittent fevers, and other diseases that commonly occur in armies, revealing such depth of knowledge as to secure the Neapolitan physician an honorable place in the history of hygiene (cf. A. Castiglioni, Storia della medicina, Milan, 1936, p. 491).

Lucantonio Porzio was born in Positano in 1639. He studied law and medicine in Naples, where he was a student of Tommaso Cornelio, at that time a lecturer in mathematics and the driving force behind the introduction of Galilean, Cartesian, and Gassendi theories in Naples. Through Cornelio, Porzio came into contact with Marco Aurelio Severino and was introduced to some of the most revolutionary scientific texts of the era, which helped make him one of the leading figures of the cultural renewal of the second half of the 17th century. After graduating in 1658, he began practicing medicine and started attending the Accademia degli Investiganti, where he met, among others, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli. From 1670 to 1683 he lived in Rome, where, as a guest of Flavio Chigi, he came into contact with intellectuals and scientists in the cardinal's circle and taught medicine and anatomy at La Sapienza. He was a member of the Accademia degli Sfaccendati and later, together with Borelli and Stefano Grandi, of the Accademia fisico-matematica. During those years, he also contributed to the editing of the “Giornale de' Letterati”. Along with Borelli -but in his capacity as a man of letters rather than a physician- he also frequented the salon of Christina of Sweden, to whom he dedicated his Erasistratus sive de sanguinis missione in 1682.

In 1683, he left Rome and moved to Venice, where, at Paolo Sarotti's Academy of Physics and Mathematics, he conducted further experiments on the vacuum and delivered two lectures on the subject of respiration, which were published in 1697. In April 1684, he set out on a journey to the Empire in search of a stable position, which Venice did not seem able to guarantee him. After a lengthy stay in Innsbruck, he reached Vienna, where he lived from 1685 to 1689; his work De militis in castris sanitate tuenda (1685) dates from this period. He returned permanently to Naples in 1688 and taught for a year at the archbishop's seminary. In 1696, he was appointed to the chair of anatomy, which he held until 1715. From 1698 to 1701, he was a member of the Accademia Palatina alongside Giambattista Vico, Pietro Giannone, Giuseppe Valletta, Domenico Cirillo, and other Neapolitan intellectuals. He died in Naples in 1724 (cf. R. Pilo, Porzio, Lucantonio, in: “Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani”, vol. 85, Rome, 2016, s.v.).

Porzio's engraved portrait features at the bottom a Latin distich by Giambattista Vico (1668-1744): “Haec tibi ni prodant hominem mortalia membra; / Quis Scribat dubites, Portius, an Nomius? / Iohannes Baptista à Vico / Regius Rhetoricae Artis Professor” (cf. B. Croce-F. Nicolini, Bibliografia vichiana, Naples, 1947-1948, I, p. 105, no. 8; see also G. Ferrari, Opuscoli di Giambattista Vico, Naples, 1860, p. 313). Porzio was an undisputed authority for the new generation of Neapolitan intellectuals. Shortly after his death, Vico, who was one of his disciples, described him as “the last Italian philosopher of the school of Galileo” (Vita di Giovambattista Vico scritta da se medesimo 1725-28, in: “Opere,” P. Rossi, ed., Milan, 1959, p. 37).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\PUVE\012069 (some copies have an additional plate with surgical instruments).

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