Materia medica vegetabile toscana del dottor Gaetano Savi professor di fisica nell'Università di Pisa
Florence: Molini, Landi e Compagnia; 1805. First edition.
Folio (14 3/8” x 9 3/8”, 365mm x 239mm): π2 1-142 [$1 signed]. 30 leaves, pp. [4] (title, blank, 2pp. dedication), 1 2-56. With 60 engraved plates colored by (a later) hand.
Bound in modern half dark green morocco over marbled boards. On the spine, 8 transverse gilt rolls. Author and title gilt to chestnut morocco in the second panel. All edges of the text-block speckled green.
Rubbed at the extremities. Damp-stain to the lower edge of the text but not of the plates. Soiling to pll. L-LX, heavily to the extremities of pl. LV. Graphite annotations in an early hand to pll. XVII-XIX, XLVII, XLIX (plants’ names in Polish or other taxonomic notes) and arabic numeration to pll. LI-LX. An obliterated binder’s or seller’s ticket to the front paste-down. Ownership signature “Ex libris Erasmi Poluzchinscii–” to the title-page.
Gaetano Savi (1769–1844) studied at and eventually taught at the University of Pisa. The title describes him as a “professor di fisica,” but in its older sense; the same meaning of “physic” as in “physician,” coming ultimately from Greek φυσικὴ ἐπιστήμη (physical science, i.e., not abstract). It is in this sense that the physic garden grew from monasteries into the wider world as sources for useful plants, which were the source of so much medicine. Indeed, this is the meaning of materia medica: the raw material — called “simples,” i.e., not compounds — for treating wounds and disease.
The physic garden or botanic(al) garden — one organized according to scientific principals — at Pisa was established in 1544 by Cosimo de’ Medici. Savi came to direct the gardens there (Orto botanico di Pisa), and made the university’s gardens a center for research, such that the first meeting of Italian scientists, held in 1839, were held there.
The present work gathers together the materia medica of Tuscany, illustrated by sixty plates engraved by Canacci after Benvenuti. Stafleu-Cowan notes that the plates were not initially colored.
The identity of the volume’s Polish owner — Erasmus Poluzchynscius (Erazm Polzsinki?) — is something of a mystery. He was a reasonably learned botanist, but more than that cannot be claimed.
Nissen, BBI 1733; Pritel 8061; Stafleu-Cowan 10.386.
Item #JLR0496
Price: $15,000