Science
Contact Andrea Mazzocchi
Science at Quaritch is broadly defined, ranging from medicine, anatomy, pharmacology (including herbals) and natural history to astronomy, physics, chemistry and mathematics.
An interest in the origins of modern chemistry has led to a specialisation in works on alchemy and distillation, and from there we have also branched out into occultism and hermeticism. We have developed an interest in gastronomy and books on nutrition and wine, an area which over the years has become one of our specialities.-
MEGUSCHER, Francesco.
Memoria … in risposta al quesito additare la migliore e più facile maniera per rimittere i boschi nelle...
Milan, presso l’I.R. Istituto, 1847.
First edition of this comprehensive report on the best means to reverse the deforestation of the mountains of Lombardy, in a way that could be both environmentally sustainable and economically profitable.
£950
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LIEBIG, Justus von.
Autograph letter to the publishers Heinrich Ludwig Brönner.
Darmstadt, 16 September 1847.
Letter from the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) to H. L. Brönner, the Frankfurt publishers and booksellers named after their eighteenth-century founder.
£750
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STRICKLAND, Hugh Edwin, and A.
G. MELVILLE. The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities and Osteology of the Dodo,...
London, Reeve, Benham, and Reeve, 1848.
An extra-illustrated family copy of the first scientific monograph on the dodo, and a related flightless bird, the Rodrigues solitaire, with the bookplates of the author and his father and a frontispiece by the author’s wife.
£7500
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CUVIER, Georges, and Edward BLYTH (editor).
The animal Kingdom, arranged after its Organization, forming a natural...
London, William S. Orr & Co., 1851.
Third Blyth edition of Cuvier’s Règne animal. A seminal work of natural history and comparative anatomy, the Règne animal was first published in December 1816 and translated into English in parts issued from 1824 to 1835. The work was edited and enlarged in 1840 by the zoologist...
£175
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BLAINE, Delabere Pritchett.
An Encyclopaedia of rural Sports, or, complete Account, historical, practical, and descriptive, of...
London, Spottiswoodes and Shaw for Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1852.
Second edition of Blaine’s comprehensive work on rural sports. First published in 1840, the Encyclopædia of rural Sports marks a considerable departure from Blaine’s earlier scientific texts on veterinary medicine, with sections on the history and philosophy of field sports, and on...
£275
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KÖLLIKER, Albert von.
Handbuch der Gewebelehre des Menschen für Aerzte und Studierende.
Leipzig, Wilhelm Engelmann, 1852.
First edition, scarce. ‘A Swiss by birth, Kölliker received his medical education by attending Müller’s lectures in Berlin and studying at Heidelberg where he graduated. After serving as prosector for Henle in Zurich, Kölliker was called to Würzburg where he remained for half a century....
£650
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HOPKINS, William.
Address delivered at the Hull Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September...
London, Taylor & Francis, 1853.
First edition, an 1853 Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science by its President William Hopkins (1793–1866), inscribed by the author and given to his erstwhile student Francis Galton (1822–1911). A mathematician and geologist, Hopkins became President of the British...
£350
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GASPARIN, Agénor Étienne, Comte de.
Des tables tournantes du surnaturel en général et des esprits par le Cte Agénor de Gasparin.
Paris, Bonaventure and Ducessois for E. Dentu, 1854.
Scarce first edition of Gasparin’s early experiments in table-turning – a form of séance in which tables appear to rotate or levitate of their own accord – which would prove highly controversial and integral to the nineteenth-century Spiritualist movement.
£1500
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ACTON, William.
Prostitution, considered in its moral, social, & sanitary aspects, in London and other large cities. With proposals...
London, [Savill and Edwards for] John Churchill, 1857.
First edition of this medico-social analysis of sex work and sexually transmitted infections in London, in which physician William Acton argues for increased governmental intervention, influential in shaping the later Contagious Diseases Acts of 1864, 1866, and 1869.
£1250
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NIGHTINGALE, Florence.
Notes on Matters affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army.
London, Harrison and Sons, 1858.
First edition, printed for private circulation only, of Florence Nightingale’s pioneering report on the sanitary condition of the British Army, resulting in a radical reform of the administration, sanitation, and nursing practices at large, this copy with remarkable nursing association.
£18000
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[BRITISH MOSSES.]
Two volumes of window-mounted moss samples, with manuscript captions.
[England, 1860s.]
A charming nineteenth-century herbarium comprising 560 moss specimens.
£850
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RIEMANN, Georg Friedrich Bernhard.
Ein Beitrag zu den Untersuchungen über die Bewegung eines flüssigen gleichartigen Ellipsoids.
Göttingen, Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1861.
the very rare offprint issue from the abhandlungen der königlichen gesellschaft der wissenschaften zu göttigen of riemann’s classic paper on rotating liquid ellipsoids, containing solutions of the equations of fluid dynamics that were later applied to the physics of rotating stars by chandrasekhar...
£750
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COPPERTHWAITE, R.H.
The Turf and the Racehorse, describing Trainers and Training, the Stud-Farm, the Sires and Brood-Mares of the...
London, Day & Son, 1865.
First edition of a scarce account of mid-nineteenth-century race horses, including notes and anecdotes on breeding, buying, training, and racing, and with an extensive table of ‘the tried brood mares of the day’, showing their pedigrees and progeny.
£160
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EMSWORTH, D.
Le cheval & le chien.
Brussels, widow Parent & Son, and Paris, Charles Tanera, 1865.
Very rare French treatise on horses and dogs. The majority of the work is devoted to horses, discussing their breeds, diseases, training, and racing, with a chapter on the Rarey method.
£375
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PONCELET, Jean-Victoire.
Traité des propriétés projectives des figures, ouvrage utile à ceux qui s’occupent des applications...
Paris, Gauthier-Villars, 1865-1866.
Second edition, revised and enlarged, Émile Borel’s prize copy. A finely bound, well-preserved, and prestigious association set.
Borel (1871–1956), the French mathematician best known for his work in measure theory and probability theory, was awarded several honours in the early...£950
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REFELL, A.
Trugbilder: Eine Anleitung Erscheinungen, auf optischer Täuschung beruhend, nach Belieben hervorzuheben und wissenschaftliche...
Stuttgart, Rieger, 1865.
First German edition, rare, of this fascinating study of mirages and optical illusions, in particular ghostly apparitions, in which the author attempts to demonstrate using the principles of optics how they might appear, with the aim of proving the absurdity of the superstitions to which they...
£1250
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SECHENOV, Ivan Mikhaylovich.
Fisiologia nervnoy sistemy [in Cyrillic].
St. Petersburg, 1866.
first edition, rare, of Sechenov’s influential lectures at the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy. Sechenov states in his preface that as soon as he began to lecture (St. Petersburg in 1860 was his first professorship) he discovered the deficiencies of the existing textbooks, which tended to be...
£2750
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HUMBLOT, F.
Journal de voyage ...
France, June-September 1866.
A handsome manuscript on mining engineering, apparently unpublished, recording visits undertaken by the engineer F. Humblot to coal mines and iron works in eastern and southern France in 1866, containing well over one hundred beautifully executed technical drawings.
£3500
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POPE, Alexander.
An essay on man… with illustrations, and notes, by S. R. Wells.
New York, Wells, 1867.
First edition thus: Pope’s Essay on man edited, with many notes, by the phrenologist Samuel Wells. ‘Looked at from a phrenological stand-point, this Poem exhibits rare beauties not seen, or rather not fully appreciated, by other eyes’ (preface). Phrenological thinking was influential in 19th-century...
£120
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MILL, John Stuart, and Edward Livingston YOUMANS.
Новѣйшее образованiе: его истинныя цѣли и требованiя....
St Petersburg, Izdanie “Russkoi knizhnoi torgovli”, 1867.
First edition in Russian of these two works, published in the original that same year.
£100