[Northkeep] More new, old books.

[Niewoehner, Hugh]

And some of these are actually in English.  
 
    Damon

 

>From: Ted Eisenstein <alban at socket.net>

Subject: and again with the books

I'm in the middle of a digitizing binge, so for once I figure I'll get the news out now to avoid
doing all the labelling, copying, and sending at once - get the labelling done now, and
do the other stuff later.

Standard rules - send me, privately, your postal address, and I'll drop the disk(s) in the mail
when they're ready. Do not send cash, checks, stamps, envelopes, blank DVD's, first-born
sons, or other payments or offers of payment. Just your postal address. Really. And, no,
sending me an email saying you'd like a copy isn't sufficient: I NEED A POSTAL ADDRESS
TOO! (I've got ten or eleven email addresses from people who really, really want a disk. It's
annoying to not be able to give them what they want.)
Permission granted to cross-post this where you think it'd be useful.

So....here's what will be on the next disk(s) offered, possibly by the end of June, most likely
by the end of July:
Herbals, booze, medicinal stuff, gardening, and things very loosely connected to plants, animals,
and the use thereof, sorta maybe:

Dioscorides, De Medicinali Materia Libri Sex. 1550
Yes, _that_ Dioscorides. The pre-period Greek botanist. 365 woodcuts of plants and animals.
"..he travelled through many regions collecting information on plants that he compiled into the present
book a work of great labor and research that was considered authoritative on both botany and medicine
for no less a period than 16 centuries. ....The work consists of an account of the names and healing
virtues of approximately 500 plants and these descriptions served as the basis for the commentaries
of many of the celebrated herbalists of the 16th and 17th centuries."
Lontizer, Adam, Kreuterbuch, Künstliche Counterfeytunge der Bäume, Stauden, Hecken, Kreuter, Getreyde,
Gewürtze..., 1577

The blurb I have for this, courtesy of Christie's Auctions, Paris, is entirely in French and somewhat uninformative
as to exactly what's in it. Lots of woodcuts, all colored. Several hundred pages. Well-indexed (for once). The
title translates (via Babelfish) to <ahem> "Kreuterbuch, artificial Counterfeytunge of the trees, Stauden,
hedges, Kreuter, Getreyde, GewürtzeŠ" After a quick run-through, I saw bits on distillation, grafting,
planting, and assorted plants and planting directions. I have _got_ to find a better translation site one of
these years.

Diocles et al., The treasury of healthe conteynyng many profitable medycines gathered out of Hypocrates, Galen and Avycen, 1550.
"What a marvelous gathering of medical lore from ancient, medieval, and Arabic sources was offered to the curious English reader
though this small thick volume of wisdom....The translator was Humphrey Llwyd (1527- 68), a physician and antiquary who
was born at Denbigh and educated at Oxford.

Among the diverse contents of the tome are "A boke conteynynge the names of the compound medycynes . . .", an adaptation of the
Summula super plurimis remediis ex Mesue libris of Jacobus de Partibus (i.e., Jacques Desparts); "The epystle of Diocles unto kynge
Antigonus . . .", a translation of Epistola de secunda valetudine tuenda attributed to Diocles Carystius; and Llwyd's own "wisdome on
the causes and sygnes of everye dysease, wyth the Aphorismes of Hypocrates, and Jacobus de Partybus redacted to a certayne
order according to the membres of mans body, and a compendiouse table conteynyng the purging and confortatyve medycynes,
wyth the exposicyon of certayne names & weyghtes in this boke contayned wyth an epystle of Diocles unto Kyng Antigonus."...
A volume that captures the essence of English popular medical printin."

Fitzherbert, John, Surveyinge, 1546
"... a handy manual for landowners and their agents, covering i.a. the construction of castles and other buildings
and the design of gardens, the number and value of acres in a field, the livestock capacity of meadows, the
comparative values of wooded and unwooded lands, common land, disposing of foreign land, the 'herbage' of
towns, the value of heath, moorland and mines, issues of tenancy and stewardship including different orders of
tenants, succession to land, principles of cottaging, the duties of surveyors, how to 'butte and bounde' various
pastures, improving the quality of land, using lime and marl both for manure and to destroy heath, and by means
of irrigation and draining."

Tusser, Thomas, Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 1638.
"Thomas Tusser (1524-80) first published his 'Hundred good pointes of Husbandrie in 1557', augmented in 1573 to five
hundred, the work constitutes a farmer's alamancak, advising the husbandman in detail as to what he should be doing
each month of the year and how. It is complemented by the "Booke of Huswifrey" which gives similar advice on the actions
and duties of the rural wife and ends with the author's autobiography. It is entirely in verse....Scott said of it "there is no where
to be found excepting perhaps in Swift's 'Direction to servants' , evidence of such rigid and minute attention to every
department of domestic economy...." Tusser mentions Hops, which had been introduced in the early part of the C16th,
buckwheat, hemp and flax as common crops, also carrots, cabbages, turnips and rape which was not yet cultivated in
fields, are all listed among the herbs and roots for the kitchen." - It was written well within period, but editions kept
cropping up for quite a while.....

Chacon, Pedro, De triclinio, sive de modo convivandi apud priscos romanos, & de conviviorum apparatu, 1689.
"Treatise on ancient Roman table manners and dining customs, with appendices by Fulvio Orsini on bathing and Girolamo
Mercuriale on eating while reclining, the whole originally published in 1588. "
Yeah, published post-period about a subject that's before our period - but what the heck, it sounds interesting and at least
one person wants a copy to look at bathing customs.

And I hope yet again to include a French recipe and household accounts book from the 16th century that's been waiting to be digitized
for a few months.

One book of interest to costumers and embroiderers, included here because I'm too lazy to make two posts:
Statuti Delll'Arte di por Santa Maria. Seconde Parte. 1580
First edition of the first comprehensive statutes governing the Florentine silk trade, and related businesses,
including jewelers, goldsmiths, bankers (who sell precious metals and gems), dealers in cloth remnants,
shoemakers, tailors, lace makers, cloth printers, flag makers, commodity brokers, spinners, overcoat makers,
hairdressers, fabric dyers, weaversŠ.Standards for the grade, weight and measure of silk and silk products,
trade payment, export requirements, retailing of finished goods in shops and stalls, and lastly fines. By far the
largest section concerns silk worked with gold, silver or jewels, because of its high commercial value and the
possibility of deception and fraud."

Part One was apparently never printed, or if it had been, there's no trace of it now.

Alban