Ludovicus Pruthenus, 6 March 1498

LUDOVICUS PRUTHENUS (fl. c. 15th century). Trilogium animae. Edited by Paulinus de Lemberg. Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 6 March 1498.

First and only edition of this early contribution to neuroscience, with a woodcut of cerebral ventricles by Dürer. A compendium of medieval philosophy with sections on medicine and natural science, Ludovicus Pruthenus’s Trilogium animae features the second earliest depiction in print of the ventricular system with function assigned to the ventricles. The earliest appears in Farfengus’ 1490 edition of Albertus Magnus’ Philosophia pauperum (see lot 2). The woodcut by Albrecht Dürer shows the head of his friend Willibald Pirckheimer with circles to indicate the ventricles of the brain. Localizing the ventricles’ functions can be traced from Galen and Nemesius. Mapping the brain became an increasingly potent subject for 15th-century physicians. As the art of printed medical illustration proliferated and dissection became favored once more as an important method of learning anatomy, some scholars sought to understand how various metaphysical concepts (like cognition, memory and the soul) connect to physical structures in the body – contributing to the dawn of neurosurgery.

Rare: only four copies sold at auction in the past century (RBH). HC *10315 = H 10008; BMC II 444; BSB-Ink L-276; Bod-inc L-200; CIBN L-293; GW M29841; Goff L-379; Klebs 626.1; Schreiber 4555; ISTC il00379000.

Median quarto (222 × 163mm). 354 leaves (the last blank). Initial spaces, most with guide letters, large title-page woodcut, full-page woodcut ‘tree of virtues’, ‘caput phisicum’ portrait of Willibald Pirckheimer by Albrecht Dürer, woodcut diagrams (light waterstain visible intermittently, more pronounced dampstain at lower corner to quire m, a few corners with losses). Early flexible vellum, manuscript title on spine (stained, small losses at corners, ghost of spine label, ties wanting). Provenance: Monastery of Santa Lucia in Serra San Quirico (early inscription on title-page) – J. Baer & Co. (pencil inscription and catalogue number on front endpaper).