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8 leaves, 136 pp, 4 leaves [contents]. Recent full leather. Text browned. Very Good. First Edition in English. Wing M1428. Munk I: 163-68. "The only work that Sir Theodore Mayerne published, was the Apology . . . 'Apologia, in qua videre est, inviolatis Hippocratis et Galeni legibus, Remedia Chymice preparata, tuto usurpari posse Rupel. 1603.' He left his library, containing many MSS., to the College of Physicians. Some of these were published by Dr. Thomas Shirley, and others by Sir Theodore de Vaux, Mayerne's godson, and an honorary Fellow of the College" (Munk I: 168). "Mayerne's reputation as a physician, in his own time, was immense throughout Europe, but he was not, like his colleague Harvey, an original thinker. He and Harvey had indeed little in common, Harvey being as dismissive of chemistry as Mayerne was of the doctors of Padua. He was essentially an eclectic, who sought to incorporate Paracelsian and Hermetic ideas in a basically Galenic system. He was far more tolerant of the Galenist doctors of Paris than they of him, and sent his second son, James, to Paris to learn 'the solid foundations of medicine' from the men who had previously vituperated him. His proclaimed masters were, among the ancients, Hippocrates and Hermes Trismegistus; among the moderns, Fernel and du Chesne. His great contribution lay in his therapeutic practice, his careful and continuous observation of his patients, and his flexible response to their condition. This is recorded in his 'Ephemerides', a regular record, which shows him as an open-minded, rational, objective practitioner, not tied to any theoretical system. . . . After his death, and protracted litigation, Mayerne's books and papers passed to his niece, Aimée de Frotté, and her husband, his long-serving Genevan assistant, Jean (afterwards Sir John) Colladon; and then to their son, Mayerne's godson, Sir Theodore Colladon, physician of Chelsea Hospital. Since the Colladons had published nothing Sir Theodore de Vaux, using his own copies and supported by the Royal College of Physicians, published his Praxis Mayerniana in two volumes (1690 96). This roused Sir Theodore Colladon to supply the originals to Joseph Browne, a bookseller's hack, who then published Mayernii opera medica (1700), a hasty and inaccurate compilation prefaced by attacks on Vaux and the Royal College" (Oxford DNB). OCLC locates copies in these US libraries: Duke, NLM, College Physicians Phila., Yale. COPAC locates copies in these UK libraries: British Lib., Cambridge, Wellcome. Seller Inventory # 15184
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