Science
Contact Andrea Mazzocchi
Science at Quaritch is broadly defined, ranging from medicine, anatomy, pharmacology (including herbals) and natural history to astronomy, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
An interest in the origins of modern chemistry has led to a specialisation in works on alchemy and distillation, and from there we have also branched out into occultism and hermeticism. We have developed an interest in gastronomy and books on nutrition and wine, an area which over the years has become one of our specialities.-
NEWTON, Isaac.
Opticks: or, a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions, and Colours of Light. Also two treatises of...
London, for Samuel Smith and Benjamin Walford, printers to the Royal Society, 1704.
First edition of Newton’s Opticks, ‘which did for light what his Principia had done for gravitation, namely, placed it on a scientific basis’, and ‘expounds Newton’s corpuscular or emission theory of light, and first contains his important optical discoveries in a collected...
£70000
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SCHRÖDINGER, Erwin, et al.
A collection of offprints and papers from the library of Nándor Balázs.
1902–1961.
A remarkable collection of offprints and papers from the library of Hungarian-American physicist Nándor Balázs, laboratory assistant in the early 1950s to the Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, comprising an exceptionally strong core of Schrödinger’s works – many of...
£50000
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ARCHIMEDES.
Τα μεχρι νυν σωζομενα, απαντα … Opera, quae quidem extant, omnia, multis iam seculis desiderata...
Basel, Johannes Herwagen, [(colophon): March] 1544.
Editio princeps of the works of Archimedes, ‘the greatest mathematician and engineer of antiquity’ (PMM). Prior to this edition only a small tract in Latin translation, published in 1503, and a partial translation by Tartaglia, published in 1543, had appeared.
£45000
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ALLIONI, Carlo.
Flora Pedemontana sive enumeratio methodica stirpium indigenarum Pedemontii [– Florae Pedemontanae icones accedit...
Turin, Giovanni Michele Briolo, 1785.
First edition of the earliest Italian regional flora by the ‘Linnaeus of Piedmont’, here in the extremely rare hand-coloured state and extensively annotated by Giovanni Battista Balbis, the author’s pupil and successor at the Botanical Garden of the University of Turin.
£30000
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[INCUNABLE SAMMELBAND.]
Sammelband of ten works.
Rome, Stephan Plannck and Eucharius Silber, c. 1481–1491.
A sammelband of ten Roman incunables, nine of which printed by Stephan Plannck, covering subjects from astronomy to usury, holy water to marriage, and ending with St Antoninus’s manual for confessors, our copy with early annotations and partially preserving its original binding.
£25000
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ARCHIMEDES, BOETHIUS, and CAMPANO da Novara; Luca GAURICO, editor.
Tetragonismus id est circuli quadratura per Campanum...
Venice, [Giacomo Penzio for] Giovanni Battista Sessa, 28 August 1503.
The first appearance in print of any complete work by Archimedes, ‘generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians the world has ever known’ (PMM), including one of the earliest approximations of the value of pi.
£18000
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EUCLID.
Στοιχειων βιβλ. ιε εκ των θεωνος συνουσιων. Εις του αυτου του πρωτον,...
Basel, Johannes Herwagen, September 1533.
Editio princeps of Euclid, the ‘oldest mathematical textbook still in common use today’ (PMM), a work which ‘has exercised an influence upon the human mind greater than that of any other work except the Bible’ (DSB).
£18000
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NIGHTINGALE, Florence.
Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army.
London, Harrison and Sons, 1858.
First edition, printed for private circulation only, of Florence Nightingale’s pioneering report on the sanitary condition of the British Army, resulting in a radical reform of the administration, sanitation, and nursing practices at large, this copy with remarkable nursing association.
£18000
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BISSON, Louis-Auguste.
‘Wildfire’.
Paris, c. 1844.
An extraordinary equine portrait, testimony to the improvements made in the daguerreotype process made by Louis-August Bisson which allowed greater spontaneity through shorter exposure times.
£14500
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DE MOIVRE, Abraham.
The Doctrine of Chances: or, a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play.
London, W. Pearson for the author, 1718.
First edition, a very good copy with likely Virginian provenance, of this classic on the theory of probability and game theory, inscribed in multiple hands aboard the sixty-gun warship HMS Dunkirk, a human moment of indulgence stolen between the drudgery and danger of life aboard a Royal Naval ship.
£14000
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PONTANO, Giovanni.
De rebus coelestibus.
Naples, ‘ex officina Sigismundi Mayr Germani : summo ingenio artificis Ioannetto Salodio : Antonio Vuerengrundt : Evangelista Papiensi :...
First editions of three works on cosmology, ethics, and astrology by the Neapolitan humanist, poet, and polymath Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), an important sammelband from the celebrated library of Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), professor of natural philosophy and natural history at the University...
£11000
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[LOO, Pieter van, attributed.]
156 watercolours of flowers, plants, and fruits.
[Holland, c. 1760–80].
A truly stunning collection of over 150 original eighteenth-century botanical watercolours, attributed to the noted Dutch botanical artist Pieter van Loo (1731–1784).
£100000
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MARKHAM, Gervase.
Cavalarice, or the English Horseman: Contayning all the Art of Horse-manship, asmuch as is necessary for any...
London, Edward Allde for Edward White, [1616 –] 1617.
A beautiful copy of the second edition, ‘corrected and augmented’, of Markham’s Cavalarice, exceptionally well-preserved in a contemporary binding, from the library of the antiquary Sir John Marsham.
£9750
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POCOCKE, Richard.
A Description of the East, and some other Countries. London: W. Bowyer for the Author, [‘and sold by J. and...
[Nourse, and J. Rivington’ (I)], 1743–1745.
First edition, demy folio issue. A successful churchman Pococke (1704-1765) is now best remembered as a traveller and mountaineer. His earliest journeys were undertaken between 1733 and 1736 through continental Europe. His ‘next and most ambitious journey, from 1737 to 1740, was to the Near...
£8000
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STRICKLAND, Hugh Edwin, and A.
G. MELVILLE. The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo,...
London, Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1848.
An extra-illustrated family copy of the first scientific monograph on the dodo, and a related flightless bird, the Rodrigues solitaire, with the bookplates of the author and his father and a frontispiece by the author’s wife.
£7500
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TARTAGLIA, Niccolò Fontana.
Quesiti, et inventioni diverse.
[(Colophon:) Venice, Venturino Ruffinelli ‘ad instantia et requisitione, & a proprie spese de Nicolo Tartalea Brisciano Autire’, July 1546.]
First edition, annotated throughout by a contemporary reader, of Tartaglia’s highly influential work on ballistics and algebra, containing his polemical rule for solving cubic equations.
£6750
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BERRYAT, Jean, et al., editors.
Receuil de Mémoires, ou Collection de Pièces Académiques, concernant la Médicine, l’Anatomie...
Dijon, Auxerre, Paris and Liège, F. Desventes, F. Fournier, et al., 1754-86.
The scarce first collected edition of these scientific papers from all over Europe (lacking only the last five volumes of the Partie Française), including among its contributors such famous names as Huygens, Leeuwenhoek, Hevelius, De La Hire, Mariotte, Réaumur, La Condamine, Haller, Maupertuis, Boyle,...
£6000
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RICHARDUS ANGLICUS.
Correctorium alchymiae ... Das is reformierte Alchimy, oder Alchimeibesserung, und Straffung der Alchimistischen...
Strasbourg, Bernard Jobin, 1581.
First edition of ‘a very rare collection’ (Duveen) of five alchemical treatises, comprising Richardus Anglicus’ Correctorium and Reformierte Alchimei, Lull’s Apertorium et accuratio vegetabilium and Vom philosophischen Stein, and Geber’s Secretum.
£4500
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BONET, Nicolas.
Habes Nicholai Bonetti viri p[er]spicacissimi quattuor volumina: Metaphysicam videl[icet] naturale[m] phylosophia[m]...
Venice, Boneto Locatello for the heirs of Ottaviano Scoto, 1505.
First collected edition of the works of the French Franciscan Friar Nicolas Bonet (c. 1280–1343), owned and annotated by the Italian historian, biographer, and physician Paolo Giovio (1486–1552).
£4000
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FLEMING, Alexander, Sir.
On the antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with special Reference to their Use in...
[London, H.K. Lewis & Co., 1944.]
Second edition of Fleming’s study announcing the discovery of penicillin, one of 250 copies which Fleming commissioned to be printed in 1944. The original offprint, issued in 1929 in 150 copies and liberally distributed by Fleming to the scientific community at large for the prompt furthering...
£4000