Epidemiorum et ephemeridum libri duo, Studio & operâ M. Iacobi Thevart Medici Parisiensis, digesti, Scholiis aliquot illustrati, & in lucem primùm editi

First edition of this important work, cf. Krivatsy 588. Garrison-Morton 1673, 5047 and 5085.

Full stiff ivory vellum, spine with four raised bands, the author’s name handwritten in black ink, one defect on the fourth band, blind-tooled rolls on the caps, gilt fillets highlighting the raised bands and framing the boards, small vellum losses on the covers, losses at the corners of the first and last blanks, red sprinkled edges, contemporary binding.

Bound after this work are three other treatises by Guillaume de Baillou, all printed by Quesnel in 1640. Krivatsy, who describes a volume composed in the same manner as ours, suggests that this collection may have been published in this form.

We provide below the description of the other pieces:   

   -   Definitiorum medicarum liber. (Title in red and black, 9 unnumbered ff., 108 pp. and 4 unnumbered ff. The title and preliminary leaves have been bound by mistake after the preliminaries of the first work).

Cf. Krivatsy 587. Garrison-Morton 6796.

First edition published in 1639, with cancel title dated 1640. "A glossary of Hippocratic terms" [Garrison-Morton].

 -    Commentarius in libellum Theophrasti De vertigine. (Title, 1 unnumbered dedication leaf, 41 pp., 1 unnumbered f.)

Cf. Krivatsy 582. First edition. "Includes Greek and Latin text of Theophrastus's De vertigine" [Krivatsy]

  -   De convulsionibus libellus. (Title, 7 unnumbered ff., 51 pp., 2 unnumbered ff.) Cf. Krivatsy 585.

First edition of this treatise on convulsions.

A very rare collection preserved in contemporary vellum.

Garrison-Morton cites this work on three occasions for its contributions to three different fields of medicine: epidemiology, the identification of diphtheria, and that of tussis quintana or whooping cough.

"De Baillou was a follower of Hippocrates in his advancement of the doctrines of 'epidemic constitutions'. Crookshank regards him as the first modern epidemiologist (…) A pupil of Fernel, de Baillou was a brillant writer and speaker. The above work includes a description of the epidemic of diphteria in Paris, 1576. Later de Baillou advocated of tracheotomy, although there is no evidence that he performed that operation (…) First description of whooping cough. Baillou called it tussis quintana". Cf. Garrison-Morton, loc. cit.

Guillaume de Baillou [1528-1616] was physician to Henri IV. Despite his renown, this practitioner published no work during his lifetime. He bequeathed his manuscripts to two doctors of the Faculty of Paris, among them Jacques Thévart, who edited the four treatises included in this collection. "A pupil of Fernel, Guillaume de Baillou was in his time one of the great masters of infectious pathology (…) He provided new details on smallpox. He discerned croup, the laryngo-tracheal localization of diphtheria, whose angina was already known to the Ancients, particularly to Aretaeus who had named it 'Syrian ulcer'. He clearly distinguished acute and chronic 'rheumatisms'. To him we owe the first identification of the 'tussis quintana' which was soon afterwards – and wrongly – called whooping cough, in reference to the hood placed on certain patients thought to be contagious". Cf. Bariéty and Coury, 459-460.