Intermittent Fasting in the Seventeenth Century
DONNOLI, Francesco Alfonso.
De iis, qui semel in die cibum capiunt. Liber in quo demonstratur quibus corporibus, talis vivendi ratio possit esse idonea. Venice, Benedetto Miloco, 1674.
12mo, pp. [xx], 340; with engraved title; woodcut printer’s device to title-page, woodcut initials, head- and tailpieces; slight offset from frontispiece to final verso, an excellent and uncut copy; bound in contemporary carta rustica, spine with manuscript lettering; binding somewhat rubbed with small defects to spine.
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De iis, qui semel in die cibum capiunt. Liber in quo demonstratur quibus corporibus, talis vivendi ratio possit esse idonea.
First edition, an uncut copy of Donnoli’s work on the restricted eating of only one meal a day, discussing its suitability for different people and its effects on physiology.
Francesco Alfonso Donnoli (1635–1724), from Montalcino in Tuscany, taught medicine at the University of Padua. He wrote numerous works on medicine as well as poems and laudatory works addressed to various members of the house of Medici, Louis XIV, and others. This treatise on eating once a day is written as a dialogue between Critias and Glaucus; it begins with a discussion of eating once a day in antiquity, what is meant by it, the need for food and digestion, food prohibitions, and the effects on different physiologies. It is dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany, whose arms dominate the engraved title.
Rare: we have located five copies in the US (Bowdoin, Harvard, LAPL, Michigan, NLM), and two in the UK (BL, Bodley).
Krivatsy 3335.