[Hippocrates]. Hippocratis Coi Medicorum Omnium longe Principis, octaginta Voluminina, quibus maxima ex parte,...

Hippocrates. [Hippocratis Coi Medicorum Omnium longe Principis, octaginta Voluminina, quibus maxima ex parte, annorum circiter duo millia Latina caruit lingua, Gaecivero, Arabes, & Prisci nostri Medici...] Rome: Francisco Minitius Calvo, 1525. Folio. ¹4, 2¹4, [Lacks t.p. ¹1 & ¹4 -- 2 leaves replaced in facsimile on old paper], a-e6, f4, A-3O6, 3P7 [lacks last blank -3P8]. [16],[66 index], [2 register] i-dlxxv, dlxxvii-Dccxxxiii, [2 colophon]p.409 of 410 leaves. Contemp. limp vellum, soiled, title in old hand, ties replaced; recased; early owner's name dated 1698 on 2T6v, several early French owner's names; some corners with archival repairs (no text affected a few holes repaired, one in colophon leaf touches some letters). First Latin Edition.

"What we call the 'Hippocratic collection' is a large corpus of works from the medical school of Cos, the majority of which date from the last decades of the fifth century B.C. and the first half of the fourth. Although none of the seventy-odd works in this collection can be attributed with certainty to Hippocrates, the writings retain their historical significance as the earliest extant sources of Western medical thought and practice. The school identified with Hippocrates established an empirical system of medicine based upon observation and clinical experience, advancing medicine beyond the influences of magic and priestrcraft." [Norman Cat.]

"Only a few texts attributed to Hippocrates were known in the Middle Ages. The project of preparing a complete Latin edition of the Hippocratic corpus was undertaken in the early sixteenth century by Marco Fabio Calvo (died c 1527) of Ravenna. A friend of Raphael, Calvo had translated Vitruvius into Italian for the use of the artist, and prepared the first archaeological mapping of ancient Rome. In preparation for his work on Hippocrates, Calvo collated and wrote out his own manuscript of the Greek text, depending primarily on a fourteenth-century manuscript then in his possession but also consulting a 12th-century codex that is one of the oldest and most important Hippocratic manuscripts. Calvo's Greek text was completed in Rome on 24 July 1512, and he finished the Latin translation on 14 August 1515... Calvo's Latin translation was printed in Rome in 1525 by the bookseller and printer Francesco Calvo... Calvo's Greek text was never published, instead the Aldine Press printed the Hippocratic corpus in Greek in 1526..." [Sotheby's Richard Green Library, 2008.]

Adams H567. Printing and the Mind of Man 55. Grolier, Medicine 1A. Heirs of Hippocrates 10. Durling/NLM 2320. Norman 1076. Osler 149. Stillwell Science 406 & 657. Waller 4495. Wellcome 3177. Ascarelli, Romane, 138. Hoffmann II,282.