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Important work on astrology and medicine by an Italian Professor at Padua

ARGOLI, Andreas.
De diebus criticis et ægrorum decubitu libri duo.

With almost 230 woodcut diagrams.

With almost 230 woodcut diagrams.

With almost 230 woodcut diagrams.

With almost 230 woodcut diagrams.

With almost 230 woodcut diagrams.



Padua, Paulus Frambottus, 1652. 4to. Contemporary publishers boards with title in ink on spine. With almost 230 woodcut diagrams. (8), 6, (2), 371 (109-112 unpag.), 1 blank, (11) pp.

Second edition of this rare work by Andrea Argoli; the first has appeared in Padua in 1639. It is Argoli's principal astrological text, which concerns astrology in general and astrological medicine in particular. Argoli (1570-1657) was a versatile Italian scholar. He was a jurist, mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and medical writer. He was professor of mathematics at the University of Rome La Sapienza, from 1622 to 1627. Evidence suggests that he lost this post because of his enthusiasm for astrology. In 1632 he became professor of mathematics at the University of Padua, where he spent the reminder of his life. His astrology pupils may have included Placido Titi, and Giambattista Zenno, astrologer to Wallenstein.
Thorndike describes the work on the critical days as an example of the continued prevalence of astrology in the seventeenth century: 'Having in its early chapters asserted the influence of the stars, Argolus devotes the ninth chapter of the first book to instruction how to predict from one's nativity the coming train  of events of the human body. The tenth considers the subjection of the external and internal parts of the body to the planets and signs of the zodiac, and the diseases which are attributed to particular signs and planets. The eleventh chapter maintains that the outcome of illness may be more rationally and evidently investigated by astrological method than by the medical art; the twelfth instructs how to forecast the nature and time of sickness from those superior causes. The thirteenth deals with the determination of good or ill health from the revolution of the year, and it is only with chapter 14 that we at last come to critical days of which the discussion continues to chapter 21, where the first book ends ...
The first six chapter headings of Book II are all astrological: whether the disease is curable, short or long, signs of death, signs of convalescence, relation of the course of the moon, and precepts to be observed ... After reprinting the latromathematica of Hermes Trismegistus to Ammon of Egypt (pp. 133-142), Argolus regales us with the horoscopes of the nativities and the falling sick of four recent popes, Sixtus V, Clement VIII, Paul V, and Gregory XV ... In the later edition (our copy) Gregory XIII and Urban VIII (1623-1644) were added ... We further see that astrology went on at the University of Padua in the seventeenth century as well as at Bologna and at Salamanca'.

Very good uncut copy.
DSB I, pp. 244-5; Thorndike VII, pp. 122-4; Diz. biogr. degli Italiani IV, pp. 132-4 (M. Gliozzi).

Related Subjects: 17th Century  Astrology  Italy  Medicine 

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