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Science

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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.
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  1. BOYLE, Robert.

    Tractatus … Ubi 1. Mira aëris … rarefactio detecta. 2. Observata nova circa durationem virtutis elasticae...

    London, Henry Herringman, 1671 [but printed abroad?].

    I. Second edition, very scarce. The first edition, published the year before, is known in less than half a dozen copies. An English translation also appeared in 1671.

    £1750

  2. BOYLE, Robert.

    A Disquisition about the final Causes of natural Things: wherein it is inquir’d, whether, and (if at all), with...

    London, H. C. for John Taylor, 1688.

    First edition, second issue, with Boyle’s name in full on the title-page. ‘Boyle is just revered as an enthusiastic early protagonist of the experimental method … [but] he recognized the limitations of experiment and wrote widely upon the philosophical implications of scientific investigation …...

    £750

  3. BRAUN, Adolphe.

    Untitled flower study (orchids).

    c. 1870?

    A stunning monumental flower study by Adolphe Braun (1811–1877). Born in Besançon, Braun’s first career was a designer of textiles, and his first exercises in flower photography in the late 1840s and early 1850s were intended as compositional aids. His album of Fleurs photographiées (1855)...

    £1200

  4. BRAUN, Adolphe.

    Untitled flower study (camellia).

    c. 1870?

    An exquisite monumental flower study by Adolphe Braun (1811–1877). Born in Besançon, Braun’s first career was a designer of textiles, and his first exercises in flower photography in the late 1840s and early 1850s were intended as compositional aids. His album of Fleurs photographiées (1855)...

    £1200

  5. BREREWOOD, Edward.

    Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World …

    London, [Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614.

    First edition. Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613). Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the tongues in...

    £2750

  6. BROGGI, Ugo.

    Die Axiome der Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung.

    Göttingen, Dieterischen Universitäts-Buchdruckerei, 1907.

    Rare first edition of this doctoral dissertation on the solution of Hilbert’s sixth problem, written under the supervision of David Hilbert.

    £200

  7. BROWN, Thomas.

    A Manual of modern Farriery, embracing the Cure of Diseases incidental to Horses, Cattle, Sheep, Swine, and Dogs,...

    London, James S. Virtue, [c. 1850?].

    First edition of this farriery manual, likely revised from Brown’s less extensive work The complete modern Farrier (Dingley 113). After entering the Royal Veterinary College in 1846, Thomas Brown (1827–1906) rose quickly, being appointed Professor of Veterinary Science at the Royal Agricultural...

    £150

  8. BULLA, Paolo.

    Notizie intorno all’osservatorio privato di Paolo Bulla.

    Rome, Tipografia della R. Accademia dei Lincei, 1885.

    First and only edition, very rare, of this description of Paolo Bulla’s private observatory, illustrated with five striking chromolithographic plates depicting astronomical events observed by Bulla in the sky above Rome, printed by the Accademia dei Lincei.

    £1250

  9. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    Annals of Horsemanship, containing Accounts of accidental Experiments and experimental...

    London, W. Nicholson for W. Baynes, 1808.

    Third edition of Bunbury’s satirical work with humorous etchings. First published in 1791 and often presented as a continuation of Bunbury’s Academy for grown Horsemen (published in 1784 also under the name Gambado), the Annals of Horsemanship is a parody of Arthur Young’s Annals...

    £475

  10. [BUNBURY, Henry William.] ‘GAMBADO, Geoffrey’.

    An Academy for grown Horsemen, containing the completest Instructions for Walking,...

    London, W. Dickinson, S. Hooper, and Messrs Robinsons, 1787 [colophon: Mount Vernon (NY), William Edwin Rudge, 1929].

    Limited edition, reprinted from the first, numbered 142 of 400 copies. A humorous parody of the manuals on horsemanship so fashionable in the late eighteenth century, Bunbury’s text was published pseudonymously as Geoffrey Gambado but the plates credited to his own name, with reference to the illustrator...

    £85

  11. [CASTILLO Y SORIANO, José del.]

    Amor á la creacion. Poesia dedicada á la Sociedad Madrileña Protectora de los Animales y de...

    Madrid, Sociedad de Tipógrafos, 1879.

    Very rare survival: a poem in twenty-four stanzas each of five lines devoted to the celebration of animals and plants, dedicated to the Madrid Society for the protection of nature, and publicly read by the actress Carolina Civili on the occasion of the May 1879 exhibition of plants and birds. This copy...

    £375

  12. [CAVALRY.]

    Cours d’équitation militaire, a l’usage des corps de troupes a cheval, approuvé par s. exc. le ministre de la guerre.

    Saumur, H. Fournier for A. Degouy and Névo-Degouy, and Paris, Anselin, 1830.

    First edition of an encyclopædic work on horsemanship for the use of the French cavalry, with the suite of plates. ‘L’ouvrage est en effet une veritable encyclopédie hippique : hippologie, extérieur, emploi à la selle, au trait et au bat, alimentation, hygiène, maladies et accidens, haras et...

    £225

  13. [CHARTONNET, Antoine-François.] 

    Considerations sur les devoirs des personnes qui sont engagées par leur état à servir les...

    Paris, chez Edme Couterot, 1695. 

    Rare first edition of this religious manual of instruction aimed at those caring for the sick in hospitals, exhorting carers to look after the bodily and spiritual needs of their charges ‘with charity, gentleness, compassion, patience, diligence, zeal, respect and humility’. 

    £275

  14. CHOPPIN, Henri.

    La cavalerie française … illustrée de nombreux dessins et de 16 gravures hors texte en couleurs.

    Paris, Garnier brothers, 1893.

    First edition of a well illustrated history of the French cavalry. A cavalry captain, Henri Choppin (1831–1916) published widely on the French military: the first of several works devoted to the cavalry, La cavalerie française is handsomely illustrated throughout and accompanied by sixteen...

    £175

  15. CIUCCI, Antonio Filippo.

    Promptuarium Chirurgicum In quo agitur de Morbis, qui indigent manuali Operatione Artis Chirurgiae.

    Macerata, Joseph Piccinus, 1679–1680.

    First edition, very rare, of this handbook of practical surgery, by the author of the first treatise of forensic medicine written in Italian.

    £2850

  16. COMBE, George.

    Phrenology applied to Painting and Sculpture.

    London, Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1855.

    First edition, scarce in commerce. George Combe (1788–1858) was a Scottish lawyer and a leading exponent of phrenology, co-founding in 1820 the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. This is an art historical retrospective using phrenology as the basis for an understanding of beauty and artistic ability,...

    £350

  17. COPPERTHWAITE, R.H.

    The Turf and the Racehorse, describing Trainers and Training, the Stud-Farm, the Sires and Brood-Mares of the...

    London, Day & Son, 1865.

    First edition of a scarce account of mid-nineteenth-century race horses, including notes and anecdotes on breeding, buying, training, and racing, and with an extensive table of ‘the tried brood mares of the day’, showing their pedigrees and progeny.

    £160

  18. [CORFU.]

    Notificazione. Uffizio della segreteria del governo. Corfu, 7 Maggio 1816 …

    Corfu, ‘en te typographia tes dioikeseos’, [1816].

    A seemingly unrecorded bilingual broadside, in parallel Italian and Greek, reporting on cases of plague in the district of Leftimo on the island of Corfu, issued during the British protectorate in May 1816 and printed in the capital at the government press.

    £375

  19. COSTANZO, Gaetano.

    Qualche considerazione sui mezzi curativi adoperati nel ripartimento delle donne al manicomio di Palermo …

    Palermo, Giovanni Lorsnaider, 1876.

    Very rare first and only edition of this fascinating treatise on the care of women at the asylum for the insane in Palermo, by its chief medical officer Dr Gaetano Costanzo.

    £350

  20. COX, John Roalfe.

    Horses in Accident and Disease: Notes and Sketches.

    Edinburgh, George Waterston & Sons for David Douglas, 1892.

    First edition of an elegantly illustrated veterinary work. An early advocate of the use of chloroform anaesthetic when operating on horses, J. Roalfe Cox here offers tender line drawings and brief descriptions of twenty-eight equine ailments.

    £70