SCARCE FIRST POSTHUMOUS EDITION

OPUS NOVUM CUNCTIS DE SANITATE TUENDA, ac vita producenda studiosis, apprime necessarium : in quatuor libros digestum. A Rodulpho Sylvestrio bononiensi Medico, recens in lucem editum. Ad Gregorium XIII. Pont. Max. Roma, Zanetti, 1580.

Folio (294 mm x 196 mm), full contemporary limp vellum binding with some wear; remains of ties, andwritten title on the spine. pp. [26], 339, [1] (perhaps missing a blank leaf after the Index.
Engraved vignette at title page with the coat of arms of the dedicatee (Pope Gregory XIII); some woodcuts inside text.
>br>First scarce edition of this posthumous treatise, printed four years aftes Cardano's death, in which the medical-scientific knowledges of the XVI century in the field of the alimentary hygiene (and not only) are summarized. In this important work the author studies in detail what Galenus already stated in his “De sanitate tuenda” providing valuable information on the HYGIENE (“de balneorum præparazione”, “de potu aquarum sponte nascentium, ut ad conservandam sanitatem, seu ad curandos malos affectus, faciunt”, “de cibo, et eius quantitate”, etc.), on the HEALTHY COOKING (“de coctione ciborum, et potuum, tum generibus, tum speciebus”, “de modo coquendi edulia”, etc.), on the FOOD (“de singulorum alimentorum facultatibus”, “de his quæ sunt amica, et inimica ventriculo”, etc.) and on medical-scientific subjects (“de pregnatione”, “de generatione foetus”, “de ortu infantis”, “de senectute”, “de canitie e calvitie”, “de ventriculis cura”, ecc.).

The second and third book (“liber secundus” and “liber tertius”) describe in detail a great number of vegetables (lettuce, chicory, apples, pears, etc.), animals (salmon, sturgeon, etc.) and food (milk, wine, oil, vinegar, etc). A true mine of information!Girolamo Cardano (Hieronymus Cardanus, 1501-1576) was one of the most leading and famous figure of the Italian renaissance. He was an important medician (people say that he was a second Vesalius), a mathematician (his disputation with Tartaglia about the resolution of the third grade equation is very famous), a scientist (who doesn’t know the Cardanic joint?) and much other. He wrote many books. Among others we point out the very famous: “De subtilitate” (1550), “De rerum varietate” (1557), “Artis magnæ, sive de regulis algebraicis, lib. unus” (1545).

Provenance: Ownership's inscription Gregorij Nagifaui El. Epis. Sirmien. with date 1639 at title page; another possession note of a former Hungarn abbey in the lower part of title page Conventus S. Martini de Monte Pannoniae Ordinis S. Benedicti; circular old stamp Biblioth. Reg. Scient. Universit. Hungaricae at the verso of title page.

Traces of blackish mold in the lower part of title page. An humidity stain in the lower white margin in the first leaves of the book and another one at the end of the volume, in the white part as well; browning in the lower white margin of several leaves after page 31. Last leaf with a small lack of paper with loss of one letter. Few handwritten notes. Small (negligible) repairs on few pages. Paper slightly (uniformly) browned sometimes with trace of foxing.