First edition of "the most complete collection of early writings on balneology" (Norman Library), incorporating texts on this subject from more than 70 classical, Arabic and contemporary authorities. Among them are Arabic authorities like Avicenna or Ibn Sina, Averroës and Avenzohar, but also (late) medieval) authorities like Guainerio, Gesner, Savanarola, Petrus de Abano, Maimonides, and classical authorites as Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny and Vitruvius. This collection of texts therefore offer not only a complete, both western and oriental, history of balneology from antiquity to the 16th-century and the therapeutic value of mineral baths, but also contains descriptions for more than 200 mineral baths, the then known watering-places. Some of the texts in this collection are only known from this edition. The work is beautifully illustrated with 5 full-page woodcuts, showing the floor plan for a thermal bath at Pozzuoli (f. 287), the waterwheel-driven pump used to raise water at the baths of Fideris in the Prätigau Valley in Switzerland (f. 295), a vivid view of the bath in Plombières-les-Bains in the Vosges, France, including their visitors (f. 299), a map of the Adriatic coast surrounding Trieste (f. 305) and a woodcut showing a Roman bath (f. 489). Added to this collection is Joannes Antonius Siccus's "De balneis compendium ex Hippocrate et Galeno", which seems to have been added while the book was on the press, because the text is printed after the word "Finis" and the colophon, after the table of contents and register for the whole work, in a new quire (3q).
From the collection of Haskell F. Norman (1915-1996). Also with an owner's inscription of Antonio Orsetti on the first free endpaper and another owner's inscription struk through on the title-page, the latter owner also responsible for the marginal annotations throughout the work (some shaved). Binding only a little dust-soiled, some occasional spotting, foxing and some occasional small stains. The Norman copy of a rare collection of early accounts of thermal baths. Adams D167; BM STC Italian, p. 363; Brunet I, col. 648 ("collection rare et recherchée"); Garrison & Morton 1986; Mortimer, Italian 214; Norman Library 113; Haskell F. Norman library of science and medicine, part I (Christie's New York, 18 March 1998), lot 29; Osler 1902; Wellcome I, 652.