The expert doctors dispensatory. The whole art of physick restored to practice. The apothecaries shop, and chyrurgions closet open’d; wherein all safe and honest practices are maintained, and dangerous mistakes discovered … Together with a strict survey of the dispensatories of the most renowned colledges of the world... Containing, First, the Latine names of all simples and compounds English’d. Secondly, the vertues, qualities, properties, quantities, and uses of all simples and componnds [sic]. Thirdly, the way of prescribing remedies. Fourthly, the nature, qualities, and symptomes of all diseases, Fifthly, cautions for the applying all both internal and external medicines. To which is added by Jacob a Brunn... a compendium of the body of physick … and these forms of remedies now before prescribed by the famous P. Morellus.
London: printed for N. Brook at the Angel in Cornhil neer the Royal Exchange, 1657.
Collation:
8vo: A–2K8, 264 leaves, pp. [32] 471 [9], engraved
frontispiece on A1, last page blank; U5, dated titlepage ‘The physicall
magazeen. Or A systeme of the matter of physick,... by Doctor Jacob A
Brunn’.
Condition:
163 x 100mm. Frontispiece soiled and frayed with loss of engraved
surface and mounted; title frayed with loss of a few letters and line ends
and mounted; last two leaves strengthened with tissue; some headlines
shaved; overall discolouration and marginal browning.
Binding:
Contemporary blind ruled sheep. Rebacked, new endleaves, corners worn.
Provenance:
Early inscription ‘Jasper Mayers His Book’ on last (blank) page; Edwin
Clarke (1919–1996).
References:
Wing M2719; ESTC R18363;
Wellcome IV, p. 176; Waller 6668; Krivatsy 8088 (calling for only [28]
preliminary pages and the frontispiece); Poynter 21.
Price:
£650
A translation of Pierre Morel, Methodus praescribendi formulas remediorum elegantissima; and Johann Jacob Brunn, Systema materiae medicae. The Thomason copy is annotated 4 August.
¶ The lovely frontispiece is divided into two scenes. At the top, the learned doctor, flanked by his books, examines a urine flask brought to him by a wealthy woman, a nurse following behind holding her baby. Below, a smartly dressed apprentice hands the apothecary a prescription to be made up using the ingredients and chemical apparatus to be seen in his shop. Both books translated here contain very detailed instructions for the preparation of medicines by the apothecary and their administration and uses, but no information on diagnosis or prescription. Though there is no overt attack on learned physicians, scepticism seems to be implied by the the subtitle ‘the whole art of physick restored to practice’ and the scene in the doctor’s consulting room presumably refers to the widespread derision of ‘piss-prophets.’
I have catalogued this book under Culpeper’s name as it is included in Poynter’s list, but really it has nothing to do with him. The approbation over his name does not even claim that he translated it, only that ‘had I been before acquainted with his [Morel’s] Work, I had made it my businesse to have translated it’. Poynter and McCarl take this approbation to be genuinely by Culpeper, but surely it is another of Brooke’s forgeries.
