De vera curandae pestis ratione, liber unus [...]

SAMMELBAND OF THREE RARE WORKS ON THE PLAGUE AND A BOOK OF SECRETS
[Bound with:] IMSSER, Philipp (1500-1570). Klein Pestilentzbüchlin für die armen Handwercks un[d] Baurs Leut, wölche den Artzen unnd Apotecken zü weit gesessen oder sich Armüt halben schlechter ding behelffen müssen. Jn gegenwertiger Gefarlicheit auffs […] beschriben. Tübingen, n.pr., 1567. [Bound with:] SCHNELLENBERG (OCYORUS), Tarquinius (c. 1490-1561). Experimenta von zwentzig Pestilentz Wurtzeln, unnd Kreutern wie sie alle und ein jegliches besonder für Gifft un[d] Pestilentz gebraucht mögen werden dem Menchem in und ausswendig sampt viel andern heilsamen tugenden und wirckungen Teutche Recepta […] Strassburg, Josias Rihel, 1568. [Bound with:] WECKER, Johann Jacob (1528-1586). Ein nutzliches Büchlein von mancherley künstlichen wasseren, ölen, unnd weinen, jetz neuwlich in Teutsch gebracht. Basel, Peter Perna, 1569.
Four works in one volume, 8vo (mm). Pistorius: 1-8, [4], 9-67, [1] leaves. Collation: A8 2A4 B-H8 I4. Woodcut printer's device on title page. Colophon and errata at l. I4v; Imsser: [56] leaves. Collation: A-G8. The two final leaves are blank; Schnellenberg: [48] leaves. Collation: A-F⁸. The last leaf is a blank. With 14 woodcut illustrations in the text (2 full-page); Wecker: [16], 136 pp. Collation: a8 A-H8 I4. Woodcut printer's device on title page. Contemporary flexible vellum with overlapping edges, inked title on spine (lacking the ties, soiled, front panel and spine detached from the bookblock). First title page with ownership entry and marginal repair not affecting the text. A good copy.
Interesting Sammelband containing three rare works on the plague and the remedies against it, and one book of secrets, all but one in first edition.
I (Pistorius). Rare first and only edition of this treatise on the plague, which proposes among other remedies metallic and alchemical medicines, occult medicaments and the power of the Kabbalah against the disease.
“The possible relations between the study of the Cabala and the practice of medicine are well illustrated by the case of Johann Pistorius of Nidde (1546-1608). In the preface to a pest tract of 1568 he had attacked the blind worship of Hippocrates, Galen and antiquity which, he said, had been too prevalent in the sixteenth century thus far. He argued that as the ancients in their day had advanced natural science, so modern men were not so weak-minded that they could make no further new discoveries. He felt that at present there was a keener spirit of investigation in the air. In the text he recommended metallic and alchemical medicines, the bezoar stone, occult medicaments, the bone from the heart of a stag, the stone from the head of an asp, and the chick of a stork, not yet able to fly but already feathered, burned alive to ashes in an earthen pot, taken with wine, as most efficacious for the pest. Another ingredient in one of his compounds was one hundred and eighty scorpions captured at the rising of Sirius. A remedy of pure quintessences prepared from one hundred and fifty simples in such artful proportions that it seemed sent from the sky, he refused to divulge further at present. He discussed for some eight pages, however, the question whether there was curative power in words […] Nearly twenty years later Pistorius began the publication of his library of writers on the Cabala but does not seem to have carried it farther than the first volume. He says he began to study the doctrine of the Cabala when little more than a boy and collected many books on it in Hebrew and Latin. Of these he now printed Reuchlin's De verbo mirifico and De arte cabalistica, Riccio's De coelesti agricultura, Archangelus de Burgo Novo, Leo Hebraeus De amore, rabbi Joseph's Gate of Light, and one or two other treatises. Fourteen years later Pistorius was attacked by Jacob Heilbronner in a work entitled Daemonomania Pistoriana and dedicated to Frederick, duke of Wurtemberg and Tech, and count of Montbéliard (1593-1608)