SPACH, Israel.

Argentinae [Strassburg]: Sumptibus Lazari Zetzneri, .1597

Folio, pp. (xxxvi), 28, 1080, (34). Title in red and black with printer’s woodcut device, and numerous woodcut illustrations in the text. Signature Ff bound before Dd, paper heavily browned throughout (as usual). Seventeenth century morocco, brown morocco label on spine (fore-edge a little rubbed, a few surface strips torn from the cover). Manuscript ex libris of H.J. Baron of Corsica, 1659, on front free endpaper.

FIRST EDITION under Spach’s editorship, and the most complete edition of this celebrated collection of gynaecological writings, incorporating the best that had been written on the subject. “Spach’s compilation of gynecological and obstetrical texts was the largest such collection of its day, reprinting most of the works collected in Caspar Wolff’s Volumen gynaeciorum and Gaspard Bauhin’s Gynaeciorum sive de mulierum affectibus (1586–1588), and adding several other treatises. The collection includes works by Plater (whose anatomy of the female genitalia heads the collection), Moschion, Le Boë, Montanus, Paré and many others. Some of the anatomical woodcuts are taken from Vesalius’s Fabrica, in particular his ‘masculinized’ representation of the female reproductive organs; also illustrated are various surgical and gynecological instruments, including a speculum” (Norman). The valuable index appears in this edition for the first time, together with the works of Bauhin (on Caesarean section), Corda, Akakia, and Mercati. This book was printed on poor quality paper, and most copies (but not all, the Norman copy being one exception) are usually badly browned. The binding of this copy is of red morocco, but in a very plain style, possibly a Corsican “country” binding. G&M 6013. Norman catalogue 1977.

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