FERRI, Alfonso.

Romae: apud Valerium et Aloysium Doricòs fratres, .1552

4to, pp. (iv), 132, (4)contents. Three woodcuts of instruments in the text. Lower blank corner of title torn away and very neatly restored, pale dampstain in the upper margin of eight leaves, a few small insignificant stains, generally an excellent copy. Modern vellum over boards.

FIRST EDITION. The second monograph on the treatment of gunshot wounds (Paré’s being the first), which, with syphilis on which Ferri also wrote a monograph, were the two greatest medical problems of the sixteenth century. Ferri was the first to deal with injuries caused by heavy guns. He invented a surgical instrument called an “alphonsinum” for removing bullets, which is illustrated in three woodcuts on page 29. He advised correctly that pieces of clothing and armour left deep in a wound led to suppuration, and should be removed, but he also perpetuated the idea that gunshot wounds were poisonous. The tract on the fleshy growths on the cervix of the bladder is of particular interest to the historian of urology, and is one of the earliest on the subject. The Spaniard Andrès Laguna published a work on the same subject the year before (1551), which is cited as the first important work on diseases of the genito-urinary system. This tract by Ferri, which was the subject of an extensive analysis by Malgaigne, is discussed at length by Desnos, Histoire de l’urologie, pp. 99–100. Cockle, Military books, 844. Cushing F105.

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