Venice: heirs of Luca Antonio Giunti, 1596, 1597. Latin translation published by heirs of Lucantonio Giunti.
1597 VENETIAN RENAISSANCE PUBLISHER GIUNTI'S LATIN TRANSLATION OF A VOLUME CONTAINING 5 OF GALEN'S WORKS WITH WOODCUTS AND EARLY MARGINAL NOTATIONS.
13 1/2 inches tall hardcover, 19th century 1/2 leather binding with marbled boards, spine with raised bands and gilt title, new endpapers, original title page at beginning of each of 5 volumes, each bordered by woodcuts showing scenes from Galen's life, total 852 pp containing many historiated initials, head- and tail-pieces. Notable is a woodcut showing Galen dissecting a pig, surrounded by a number of observers (detail 4th image). This massive volume contains 5 of 11 volumes of a Latin translation of Galen's collected works, published by the heirs of Venetian printer Lucantonio Giunti, whose printer's device appears on the title pages and last pages. As often found in Renaissance books, there are marginal notations in contemporary hand throughout the text, revealing the use of the volume in medical practice of the time. Covers and spine are clean and unmarked with light wear to corners, binding is tight, first title page is soiled with ragged edges, with edge soiling to the following 8 leaves. There are old water stains to the bottom pages of the last 2 volumes, browning of some pages throughout, and scattered marginal worm holes. Despite these signs of 4 centuries of use, the remaining 4 title pages, letterpress and woodcuts are crisp and clean--overall good+. The work is listed as #1762 (page 209) in Sixteenth Century Printed Books in the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, OCLC Number / Unique Identifier: 869278341 Maryland (1967). CONTENTS OF THIS VOLUME: 1) Introductory section containing Galeni Opera ex septima Juntarum editione, title page, Preliminaries 7 leaves, Galeni Vita 14 leaves, Index 3 leaves, Synopsis 80 leaves; 2) Isagogici Libri, 72 leaves; 3) Extra Ordinem Classium Libri, 79 leaves; [blank page], 4) Spurii Libri, 126 leaves; 5) Fragmenta, 44 leaves.
LUCANTONIO GIUNTI (1457 -1538) was a Florentine book publisher and printer, active in Venice from 1489, a member of the Giunti family of printers. His publishing business was successful, and among the most important in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Some thirty members of the family became printers or booksellers. In Venice the Giunti press was the most active publisher and exporter of liturgical texts in Catholic Europe.
GALEN [Galen of Pergamon] (129 - circa 216) was a physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Arguably the most accomplished of all medical researchers of antiquity, Galen influenced the development of various scientific disciplines, including anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, and neurology, as well as philosophy and logic. Galen may have produced more work than any author in antiquity. So profuse was Galen's output that the surviving texts represent nearly half of all the extant literature from ancient Greece. Galen's understanding of anatomy and medicine was principally influenced by the then-current theory of humorism (also known as the theory of the four humors: black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm), as advanced by ancient Greek physicians such as Hippocrates. Galen's views dominated and influenced Western medical science for more than 1,300 years. His anatomical reports remained uncontested until 1543, when printed descriptions and illustrations of human dissections were published by Andreas Vesalius. Galen's original Greek texts gained renewed prominence during the early modern period. In the 1530s, Belgian anatomist and physician Andreas Vesalius took on a project to translate many of Galen's Greek texts into Latin. Vesalius's most famous work, De humani corporis fabrica, was greatly influenced by Galenic writing and form. Galen's writings were shown by Vesalius to describe details present in monkeys but not in humans, and he demonstrated Galen's limitations through books and hands-on demonstrations despite fierce opposition from orthodox pro-Galenists such as Jacobus Sylvius.
