A Treatise on the Fossil, Vegetable, and Animal Substances, That are made use of in Physick. Containing the History and Descriptions.the proper Method of Discovering the Nature of Medicines.Translated from a Manuscript copy.by G Duglas.

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8vo, pp xxiv, 387, [13, index], bound in contemporary unlettered calf, spine with raised bands, rubbed and chipped at spine ends and worn at corners and edges, front endpapers replaced, rear free endpaper lacking, but the paste down with manuscript notes, small repair to title page, a few light magrinal pencil crosses else clean and sound internally, a clean sound copy internally, FIRST EDITION, an honest and eminently useable copy of this sole English printing, translated by G Douglas from a curious French manuscript by Geoffroy in which he proposes a theory of substance 'unity' according to a table of disposition. Through this he extolles various medicinal virtues, including precise details of preparation and use, of a variety of preparations derived from fossil sources, both organic and non-organic. A somewhat unusual approach which engenedered not much traction within the traditional English medical cicles. Materia medica was becoming an increasingly lucrative commercial product at this time and many of the vegetable substances employed by Geoffroy would have been familiar to British herbalists of the time, at least in similar forms. Contemporary manuscript comments on the book on the lower paste-down endpaper suggest that Geoffrey's ideas of substance verses properties were not by any means universally accepted; yet this and similar experimental works would lay the basis of modern chemistry. N° de ref. del artículo 27983

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