Methodi vitandorum errorum omnium qui in arte medica contingunt libri quindecim, quorum principia sunt ab auctoritate medicorum & philosophorum principum desumpta [...] Nunc primum accessit ejusdem authoris De inventione remediorum liber. Cum triplici indice [...]

Autore: SANTORIO, Santorio (1561-1636)

Tipografo: Pierre Aubert

Dati tipografici: Genève, 1631


Two parts in one volume, 4to (218x145 mm). [16], 605, [51]; 108 pp. Segn.: *-**4 A-NNnn4; a-n4 o2. Title page printed in red and black with a woodcut vignette in the center. With a few samll woodcut illustrations in text. The second part contains the De remediorum inventione liber. Contemporary vellum-backed cardboards, inked title on spine, red sprinkled edges. On the title page ownership inscription “Spectat ad Conventum Caroli Padue PP. Reformatorum”. Slightly browned throughout, more strongly in places, some marginal damp staining.

Third edition (second issue) of Santorio's Methodi vitandorum errorum (after the two Venice editions of 1603 and 1630), but the first to contain as an appendix the De remediorum inventione liber (first printed in Venice in 1629).

“It is a comprehensive study on the method to be followed in order to avoid making errors in the art of healing. Without breaking with the Galenic tradition, Santorio ventured certain criticisms of classical physiology and expressed ideas that prefigured the mechanistic explanations of the atrophysical school. According to Santorio, the properties of the living body do not depend only on the four elementary qualities, nor even on the secondary and tertiary qualities, as they were defined by Galen, but also on ‘number, position, form, and other accidental factors.' Santorio employed the analogy (later used by Descartes) between an organism and a clock, the movements of which depend on the number, the form, and the disposition of its parts. Nevertheless, he remained faithful to traditional humoral pathology and tried to explain all internal diseases as particular cases of humoral dyscrasia. Although Santorio accepted the ancient scheme that attributed diseases to a bad mixture of the four humors, he modified it profoundly by some quantitative attributions. In the pathology of Hippocrates and Galen there is no discontinuity between eucrasia and the innumerable possible pathological deviations. Santorio, starting from certain remarks of Galen on the ‘degrees' of dyscrasia, defined the discontinuity of morbid states and proposed to make known, by mathematical deduction, all the possible diseases. (According to his calculations, their total number was about 80,000.) In Methodi vitandorum errorum, Santorio mentioned a few measuring instruments (the scale and the ‘pulsilogium') but did not seem to attach special importance to them. It should be emphasized, however, that theoretical considerations form only the background to this medical textbook, which is of an eminently practical orientation. The book contains several good descriptions of diseases and offers model cases of differential diagnostics, for example, the clinical distinction between an abscess of the mesentery and intestinal ulcerations” (D.S.B, XII, pp.101-102).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\MILE\027100; Krivatsy, 10253.


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