BEVERWIJCK, Johan van
Exercitatio in Hippocratis aphorismum de calculo ad N.V. Claudium Salmasium Equitem et Cons. Regium. Accedunt eiusdem argumenti doctorum epistolæ
Lugduni Batavorum, ex officina Elseviriorum, 1641
12mo, half leather binding (19th century), 285 pp.; good copy, small chip to the binding
Rare first Elzevir edition of this epistolary essay by Johan van Beverwijk in which he argues against Claude Saumaise’s interpretation of Hippocrates’ aphorism about urinary stones, the subject of van Beverwijck’s thesis when graduating in Padua. The polemic between van Beverwijck and the French philologist Saumaise started in 1640 with Saumaise’s publication of ‘Interpretatio Hippocratei Aphorismi lxxix, section e iv, de calculo’ in response to van Beverwijck’s own ‘De Calculo renum et vesicae liber singularis’ of 1638. Beside the letters of the two protoganists of the discussion, this volume also contains a correspondence on the subject between van Beverwijck and Gerardus Vossius, a Dutch classical scholar and theologian.
The second part of the book is a collection of letters, grouped under the subtitle Spicilegium de calculo, in which van Beverwijck discusses with prominent contemporaries the subject of urinary calculi. The correspondents include among others Guy Patin, Nicolaas Tulp, William Harvey, Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius and Lazare Meyssonnier.
A beautiful example of the “philological physicians” at their best, for whom Hippocrates had the greatest authority and polemical correspondance was business as usual. With woodcut Elzevir device to title.
