Regole della sanità et della natura de cibi. Di Ugo Benzo medico, & filosofo Sanese. Con le annotationi di Gio. Lodovico Bertaudo Medico delle Sereniss. Altezze di Savoia. Opera utile, ornata di varie storie, et arricchita d'un trattato nuovo della ebbrietà, & dell'abuso del Tabaco

16mo (122x87 mm). [32], 850 [i.e. 800] pp. Collation: †-†⁸ A-Ddd⁸. Printer's device on the title page. Woodcut decorative initials. Contemporary vellum with overlapping edges, inked title on spine (spine slighlty darkened). Bookplate Jacques and Héléne Bon. Ownership entries on the front flyleaf (one dated 1763). Some occasional light foxing, pale marginal staining to the last few leaves, a very good, genuine copy.

First edition of the treatise on dietetics and hygiene by the Sienese physician Ugo Benzi, with annotations by the Turin physician Giovanni Lodovico Bertaldi, who also wrote the appendix, printed here for the first time, on the abuse of alcohol and tobacco. The edition was reprinted in Turin two years later.

Ugo Benzi's Tractato utilissimo circa la conservazione della sanitade (‘Very useful treatise on the preservation of health'), first printed in Milan in 1481, was one of the very first works on hygiene and dietetics to be published in Italian. Probably, this work, of which no manuscript copies exist, was first written in Latin and then translated into Italian by Benzi himself or by some other author. The reappearance of Benzi's work in Turin in 1618 is a testament to its longevity and indicates, at the same time, that ordinary medical practice was at least a century behind the development of scientific theory. A sort of compendium of the Galenic diet, after discussing air, exercise, sleep, and nutrition, most of the work describes in detail the properties, qualities, and medicinal uses of various foods and beverages, arranged in alphabetical order up to the entries sugar (“zucchero”), grapes (“uve”), and wine (“vino”).

Bertaldi's appendix deals with exotic foods, the “passions of the soul” (including love, anger, fear, jealousy, hope, hatred, ambition, greed, envy, and sadness), before moving on to consider the abuse of tobacco and alcohol, adding several rather harsh remedies for drunkenness not mentioned by Benzi, including, for example, the practice in Geneva of placing drunkards on a giant wheel and spinning them until they vomited.

Ugo Benzi was born in Siena in 1376. His uncle Marco was a famous doctor in Siena. The economic conditions of his father Andrea, a magistrate by profession, were good until, after his faction was defeated and war broke out between Siena and Florence, he fell into ruin, so much so that he was imprisoned for debts, from which his son would free him in 1405. After attending the grammar school of a certain Bennazio in Siena, he probably went to Florence in 1393, where he began studying philosophy, continuing later in Bologna at the school of Pietro Mantovano, with whom he nevertheless had a falling out in 1394 for reasons that are unclear. Following this controversy, Benzi retired to his home, devoting himself to the study of logic, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music, grammar, and rhetoric. He then moved to Pavia, where he graduated in logic and philosophy in 1396 and shortly afterwards began teaching logic until 1402. Later called to the University of Bologna, Benzi reorganized the teaching of philosophy there, promoting the study of the works of Averroes and Albertus Magnus. In Bologna, he also studied medicine at the school of Marsilio di S. Sofia. In February 1405, Benzi was hired by the University of Siena to teach medicine. In 1409, having come under suspicion by the rulers of the city, Benzi left Siena and entered the service of Cardinal Baldassarre Cossa as a physician, following him first to Pisa and then to Bologna. Subsequently, summoned to Parma by Niccolò d'Este immediately after the reopening of the university in November 1412, Benzi taught medicine in that city for four consecutive years. He there wrote three of his main commentaries, on Galen, Hippocrates' aphorisms, and Avicenna, as well as some Quaestiones rerum naturalium. Recalled to Siena, where he was acquitted of all previous charges, Benzi taught there from 1416 to 1421, when he moved first to Florence and then back to Bologna, where he remained until 1425. In November 1425, Benzi was hired by Filippo Maria Visconti as professor of medicine at the University of Pavia, a position he held until 1428-29. Benzi left Pavia after finishing his lectures on Hippocrates' aphorisms, leaving his commentary on Avicenna incomplete, to go to the University of Padua, where he is also remembered for a cadaver dissection (1430). Shortly afterwards, he moved to Ferrara, called by Niccolò d'Este as court physician, without however holding a chair at the university. He was only able to teach privately and occasionally; among his disciples was Angelo Decembrio, whose treatise on the plague is entitled De cognitione et curatione pestis egregia Ugone praeceptore. From February 9 to May 6, 1439, under the protection of Niccolò d'Este, Benzi made his last visit to Siena, where he was received with great honors. A few months later, on November 30, 1439, he died in Ferrara.

Benzi's fame is mainly linked to his qualities as a practical doctor and teacher and scholar of theoretical medicine; although he does not stand out for his discoveries or for his original thinking, he nevertheless demonstrates a vast knowledge of medical doctrine and uncommon technical and therapeutic experience. Of particular importance are his Consilia saluberrima ad omnes aegritudines, a large series of clinical cases chosen to cover a wide range of medicine: these constitute one of the earliest examples we have of systematic collections of various diseases. He was also the author of commentaries on some fundamental medical texts studied in universities: on Galen, Hippocrates' Aphorisms, and Avicenna's Canon. (cf. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 8, Rome, 1966, s.v.).

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\UFIE\001525; USTC, 4027827; Krivatsy, 1102; D.P. Lockwood, Ugo Benzi medieval philosopher and physician (1376-1439), Chicago, 1951.

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