BRUNFELS, Otto (1488-1534). Theses seu communes loci, totius rei medicae. Item. De usu pharmacorum, deque artificio suppressam alvum ciendi, liber. Edited by Johannes Munterus. Strasbourg: Gregorius Ulricher, 1532.

First edition of one of Brunfels’s scarcer works, a treatise on pharmacological medicine. The Carthusian monk-turned-heretical botanist Otto Brunfels viewed "botany to be a form of divine revelation, providing people with tools to heal the body just as Scripture provided the means to save the soul" (Marcus). After several years as an evangelical preacher, he "moved to Strasbourg … where he established a school and directed his interests to the study of botany and medicine" (Heirs of Hippocrates).

The present work is an ordered digest of the aphorisms and maxims of the best authors (to paraphrase Brunfels) on the topic, including Hippocrates, Soranus of Ephesus, Celsus, Rhazes, and Serapion. Also included here are Alessandro Benedetti’s Sententiae medicinales and tracts by Arnoldus de Villanova. Adams B-2931; Heirs of Hippocrates 111.

Octavo (155 x 103mm). Gathering B bound slightly out of order. Woodcut device on title and final page (some pale dampstaining at edges, a few spots). Contemporary blindstamped pigskin over flexible boards (a little warped, some worming to rear board). Provenance: Georgius Paulinus Holucha (several inscriptions throughout, with various dates 1612-1616, including on fore-edge; a few marginal notes and marks).