Daniel Sennert (1572-1637), DE ARTHRITIDE TRACTATUS CUI ACCESSIT TRAGOPODAGRA LUCIANI, Wittenberg, 1631

Description

Wittenberg, Sumptibus Haredum Zachariae Schureri, (in fine: Typis Ambrosii Rothi), 1631

In 8vo (205x165cmm.); Collation : 109 pp. (i.e. 108), 2 ll. (l.b.), pp. 109-132. Browning throughout for the known type of XVII C. paper, all quires solidly holding, contemporarily bound with a rubricated manuscript leaf dating around early XV century with capital letters in red and blue.

The manuscript used as binding contains Gregorian chants too, probably part of a Missal. We identified the incipit of one of the Eastern chants “Introduxit vos dominus in terram fluentem lac et mel alleluia et ut lex domini semper sit in ore vestro alleluia alleluia“, on rear plate, the paragraph starting by a capital blue “I”.

 

Comments:

First edition of the celebrated German physician’s treatise on gout in a contemporary binding with a medieval manuscript.

Gout was among the most persistent medical conditions in early modern Europe, and this treatise by what Omodeo describes as “one of the most reputable physicians of his time” deserves careful attention. Sennert served several terms as dean of the medical faculty at the University of Wittenberg and later became rector. He also served as personal physician to the Prince-Elector of Saxony. Today he is best remembered for attempting to synthesize diverse medical traditions, particularly classical Galenism and alchemical Paracelsianism, as well as a wide-ranging publication collecting most known treatises on scurvy. He also wrote the widely used Institutiones Medicinae, an introductory medical text reprinted throughout Europe.

The work is curiously followed by the “Tragopodagra”, a satyric play on the gout of Lucian of Samosata. The Greek text of this work is accompanied here by the Latin translation by Erasmus Schmied (1570-1637).

Reference:
Pietro Daniel Omodeo, “Daniel Sennert and the University of Padua: Circulation of Medical Knowledge and Scholas across the Confessional Divide in the Seventeenth Century,” Collected Wisdom of the Early Modern Scholar (2023), p. 63.