Ɵ Medical compendium with substantial parts of Egidius de Corbeil, De urinis, to which was added much of the Fasciculus medicinae attributed to 'Johannes de Ketham', with his diagrams of the human body and the chart to compare the colour of patients' urine, in Latin, illustrated manuscript on paper [Italy, mid-fifteenth century and 1500 or years immediately following (before 1509)]

82 leaves (plus two endleaves at front and pastedowns at each end, these filled with additional material), a sammelband of at least two volumes (wanting a leaf or so from opening of first unit, and the second unit opening at original fol. 261, and with two misbound leaves added in before this leaf: these original fols. 247-8), and with contemporary foliation (across the whole volume 236-46, [247-8 misbound and now after original fol. 261] 249-55 [skipping 255 in error], 256-61, 247-8, 261-320+5 unfoliated leaves) and sporadic quire numbers ('38' and '39') to suggest this was once part of a series of volumes foliated in one sequence for ease of reference, thus apart from missing leaves before original fol. 231, this volume complete in itself, collation: i12, ii12 (first 2 leaves or original gathering now bound at end), iii-v8, vi6, vii8, viii6, ix-, x8, xi4, approximately 31-34 lines of text in a series of hands, the main hand scrawling and leaning, rubrics and underlining in red (that accompanying main hand vermilion red), three full page diagrams: (i) original fol. 261v, the so-called 'Urine Wheel', a circular chart arranged like a flowerhead, with twenty urine flasks in its outer ring, each painted with a colour to allow practical comparison with actual patients' urine, these ranging from white through yellow, to various shades of red, ending with more medically worrying shades of green, grey and black, all with links to the 'humours' of the body listed in red script; (ii) original fol. 264v, standing man in a loincloth, on a grassy ground with thin red lines drawn from parts of his body to names of diseases affecting those parts in black ink followed by the relevant folio no. for remedies in pale red; (iii) original fol. 272r, the 'phlebotomy man', a full length figure of naked man, delicately shaded, with bright red dots showing favourable places for blood-letting; (iv) fol. 291r, a linedrawn 'wound man', impaled and injured by various weapons and with the location of his major organs and their Latin names overlaid on his body; watermarks variations of a cow's head too indistinct or obscured to allow close identification, original fol. 285r originally left blank by scribe in error and then filled with additional material by same hand, some spots, stains and a few wormholes, edges of some leaves woolly, but overall in good condition, 207 by 155mm.; contemporary binding of brown leather with concentric rectangles of ropework and foliate designs over wooden boards in apparent Venetian style, remains of four metal clasps (one each at head and foot, two on outer vertical edge), small fragments of early printing and manuscript waste used inside each board, corners scuffed with small losses there and a few wormholes in back board, spine rebacked, this most probably the original binding of the volume, but then restored (perhaps in nineteenth or early twentieth-century, when a blue crayon '649' was added to front pastedown)

An illustrated medical manuscript, created in the years immediately following the publication of the earliest versions of the Fasciculus Medicinae, perhaps within the mileau that reworked and adapted the text

Provenance:
The first part of this volume is a fifteenth-century medical compendium, mainly composed of long sections of Egidius de Corbeil's work on urine as a diagnostic tool, with other related matters both as main text and in the margins. The discoloured front endleaf of this earlier codex survives as original fol. 260. By at least 1500 this book, perhaps already missing some leaves at its beginning, came into the hands of a physician, who glossed several pages of it (original fol. 253v-56v), before adding a new front endleaf with the opening lines of part of the Facisculus medicinae, and then adding a copy of much of that work at the end of the volume. These were then apparently bound in the opening years of the sixteenth century in the binding that still holds the volume. The use of the various editions of the Facisculus medicinae by the later copyist and some of the additions here in his hand, suggests that he worked immediately after 1500, perhaps in the Veneto in the milieu where the various editions of the text were being printed in the 1490s and 1500. The dating of an addition on the front pastedown in the main hand to '1509', and an extract on one of the unfoliated leaves at the end to 21 January 1508' fixes the point by which this book was most probably in its present form. There was a large medical school at Padua at the close of the fifteenth century, and our copyist may have worked there.

Text:
The earlier manuscript unit here contains substantial sections of the De urinis of the French royal physician, Egidius de Corbeil (died in first quarter of thirteenth century). The text was an adaptation of the seventh-century Greek medical scholar, Theophilus Protspatharius, via the Articella. The earliest versions are in verse, but that here is in the later prose form.

To this has been added treatises on the colour of urine and its use in diagnosis (original fols. 261v-64r), on the various illnesses of the body arranged alphabetically (fols. 264v-71v), on the most advantageous parts of the body for bloodletting (fols. 212r-90r) and on grievous injuries and surgeries to treat them (fols. 290v-300r), each with their diagrams, all copied from the Fasciculus medicinae. This work was printed first in Venice in 1491, drawing together these independent medieval medical treatises (as well as one on gynecology ignored by our copyist) and publishing them under the name of a former owner of the collection: Johannes de Ketham. The text was popular, and was reissued in 1493, this time with a frontispiece suggesting that the works were composed by one Petrus de Montagnana, who like Ketham has proved impossible to locate and is probably fictitious. It was issued again in 1495, 1500 and 1513, with Italian translations in 1493, 1509 and 1522.

What is fascinating here is that our copyist seems to have had access to multiple early editions, and to be comparing and taking from them equally. His text is closest to that of the 1500 edition, but has been truncated and given minor adaptations in many places. However, while his figures of the 'wound man' and the 'phlebotomy man' have exposed genitals, the figure on original fol. 264v has a loincloth added showing the copyist's debt to the more coy 1495 issue and their so-called 'speedo diagrams'. Finally, the complete absence of the frontispiece or any of the narrative scenes showing the surgeon inspecting urine or similar (which were all added to the 1493 edition) may indicate an attempt to preserve the simplicity of the diagrams of the original printing.

Early editions of the work are rare even in printed format (no copy of the 1471 edition can be traced by us in public sale records, and the last copy of the 1495 issue was sold by Sotheby's in 1994 for $46,400, and the 1500 issue by Christie's in 2015 for €36,250, with another copy sold in the same house in 2013 for $37,500).

A theta symbol (Ɵ) indicates that the lot is a zero rated item and therefore not subject to VAT on the buyer’s premium. This applies to bound books (manuscripts and printed), unframed maps and albums.