SALA, ANGELO (ANGELUS).

Essentiarum Vegetabilium Anatome. Darinnen von den fürtrefflichsten Nutzbarkeiten der vegetabilischen Essentzen der Arzney: wie man dieselbige auss allerley Kräutern, Blumen, Früchten, Wurtzeln,: Rinden und Höltzern extrahieren soll, Und von anderne nützlichen, zu dieser matery gehörigen Stücken gelehret unnd gehandelt wird. Sycophantarum venenatos morsus Virtus cum perseverantia curat

Güstrow (Rostock), Johan Hallervords, 1635. Small 8vo. Later, modest clothbacked marbled boards. (24),255 pp. One leaf torn in lower margin, no loss of text. Very light browning and a few scattered brownspots.

Scarce second edition (the first 1630) of an importent work on the borderline of chemistry and medicine. Osler states that he "was one of the founders of modern chemistry".
"Sala (following Paracelsus) defined the Spagyric Art as that part of chemistry which has for its subject the natural bodies, vegetable, animal, and mineral, and such operations as tend to the end of rendering them useful in medicine.... its principal operations are separation, subtilisation, and sublimation." (Partington).
"He was an able physician and an excellent chemist, an admirer and to some extent a follower of Paracelsus, an advocate of chemical remedies, an opponent of quackery, and he was able to judge fairly the merits both of the chemical and Galenic systems of medicine then in conflict. Concring calls him the first of the chemists who was free from triffling;... (Ferguson).
"Considering his work as a whole, it is evident that Sala was above all a practitioner. In his view, demonstrations could be carried out only through manual operations (inventionibus manualibus), that is to say, only with the aid of experimental examples, which he clearly distinguished from argumentation. For him, chemistry was still a handicraft (ars)."(DSB).
Ferguson II, p. 314. - Partington II, p. 277. - Not in Duveen - Not in Neville.

Order-nr.: 53784