THE PRETERNATURAL STATE OF ANIMAL HUMOURS DESCRIBED, by their sensible qualities, which depend on the different degrees of their fermentation. And the cure of each particular cachochymia is performed by medicines of a particular specific taste, described. To this treatise are added two appendixes. I. About the nature of fevers and their ferments, and cure by particular tastes. II. Concerning the effervescence and ebullition of the several cachochymia's; on which all inflammations, tumours, pains, and fluxes of humours depend; especially those in the Gout and Asthma; and the particular tastes of the medicines curing ebullitions, are described.

[FLOYER, Sir John.]

Edité par London printed by W. Downing for Michael Johnson. And are to be sold by Robert Clavel Sam. Smith and Benjamin Walford in St. Paul's Church-Yard, 1696

A propos de cet article

8vo, pp. [xxiv], 264; rather browned throughout, but a good copy, complete with preliminary licence leaf from the College of Physicians; bound in old marbled boards, with new calf spine. First and only edition: this is the second book by the physician John Floyer (1649-1734). He had been educated at Oxford, and since 1675 had been settled at Lichfield, where in 1684 he was knighted by the King for political rather than medical services. He had clearly come to know the local bookseller Michael Johnson, who published his first work, Pharmako-Basanos, or the touchstone of medicines, in 1687, which is cited on the title page here. With this book, Johnson again seems to have commissioned the printing in London, and then published it himself, but this time with other London booksellers as outlets for distribution. Floyer must have been a familiar visitor to the Johnson home over many years, as when Samuel Johnson, the bookseller's elder son, was born in September 1709, and was found to be afflicted with scrofula, 'the King's evil', it was Floyer who recommended that he be taken to London to receive the royal touch from Queen Anne. Boswell tells us that in later life all that Johnson could recall of this was of 'a lady in diamonds, and a long black hood'; but of course the touch had no effect on the disease itself. Floyer dedicated this treatise to Sir Charles Holt, of Aston, Warwickshire. As Mark Jenner comments (p. 657), Floyer seems to have done much of his research among the country gentry of Warwickshire and Staffordshire (no doubt his knighthood opened doors for him). In the dedication, he remarks on Holt's 'Chymical Experiments', which 'have given me clear Notions of the Principles of many particular Bodies, and their Sensible Qualities, by Anatomical Dissections'. He also remarks on the usefulness of Holt's microscopes, which enabled him to observe 'more of the Consistence of Fluids than I could otherways have known'. Floyer himself suffered from asthma, of which Johnson also complained in the last year of his life: in July 1784 he wrote to Dr Brocklesby that 'I am now looking into Floyer, who lived with his asthma to almost his ninetieth year' (Life IV p. 353). There is no evidence that he owned any of Floyer's works, but he might have borrowed a copy of this book; however, it is true that Floyer also wrote a later book on the disease (1698, reprinted at least twice), and it is more probable that it was that treatise which he consulted. This book is one of a very small number of titles published by Michael Johnson, and it is distinctly uncommon. ESTC records twenty copies, but only five in North America at the Huntington, National Library of Medicine, Northwestern University, Countway Library (Boston) and New York Academy of Medicine. See Mark S.R. Jenner, 'Tasting Lichfield, touching China: Sir John Floyer's senses', in The Historical Journal, 53 (2010), pp. 647-70.

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: THE PRETERNATURAL STATE OF ANIMAL HUMOURS DESCRIBED, by their sensible qualities, which depend on the different degrees of their fermentation. And the cure of each particular cachochymia is performed by medicines of a particular specific taste, described. To this treatise are added two appendixes. I. About the nature of fevers and their ferments, and cure by particular tastes. II. Concerning the effervescence and ebullition of the several cachochymia's; on which all inflammations, tumours, ...
• Éditeur: London printed by W. Downing for Michael Johnson. And are to be sold by Robert Clavel Sam. Smith and Benjamin Walford in St. Paul's Church-Yard
• Date de parution: 1696
• Reliure: Couverture souple
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Medicine