Canon Medicinae [in Hebrew]

Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

Naples: Azriel ben Joseph Ashkenazi Gunzenhauser, 1491.

First Edition. Hardcover (Full Leather). Good Condition. Item #048645

A 179 leaf (of 480) leaf fragment of the five books of Avicenna's Canon of Medicine printed in Hebrew in 1491 (possibly into 1492). The copy is made up from leaves from at least two different copies, one trimmed xloser than the other. Modest dampstains at the top edges, scattered minor worming, foxing, early marginalia and manicules throughout, some trimmed slightly. More extensive dampstains and wormtrails along with some paper repairs to wormtrails on some of the smaller leaves including some loss of text. All of the missing leaves provided in facsimile. 142 of the leaves are in succession with a few small groupings elsewhere. Bound up in modern full blind tooled leather with marbled endpapers with a chemise and slipcase.

The first and only Hebrew edition of Avicenna's monumentally influential medical treatise which was a central text from it's creation at the beginning of the 11th century all the way through the Renaissance and beyond. John Urquhart M.D. a doctor and professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at UCSF once famously said that if marooned on a desert island and forced to pick between Avicenna's Canon (ca. 1012) and Osler's The Principles and Practice of Medicine (1892) he would pick The Canon because it offers an integrated approach to surgery and medicine. It was it's comprehensive and integrated approach that made it a central medical reference for over 600 years. The five books cover anatomy and basic principles, a materia medica, diseases of one part of the body, diseases that affect multiple parts of the body, and a formulary of compounds.

Printed during the flourishing of Hebrew printing in Naples where Arabic speaking Jews from Spain came across to Naples and set up presses translating important works from Arabic to Hebrew for the non-Arabic speaking Italian Jews. Hebrew printing had begun in Rome around 1474 and spread to other Italian cities over the next 10 years until the death of the more lenient Sixtus IV. However, in 1485, printing in Hebrew became impossible in most of Italy but continued in Naples. Joseph Gunzenhauser had immigrated to Naples in 1486 and set up his press there. He died in 1490 and the press was continued by his son Azriel - together they printed 13 of the approximately 175 known Hebrew incunabula. ISTC ia01417300 Size: Folio. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilo. Inventory No: 048645.

Price: $7,500.00