Epiphanie medicorum. Speculum videndi urinas hominum. Clavis aperiendi portas pulsuum. Berillus discernendi causas & differentias febrium by PINDER, Ulrich - 1506

Nürnberg: [Friedrich Peypus?] for the author, 1506. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 4to (207 x 148 mm). Signatures: [pi]2 A-Z6 a-k6 l-m4 (-m4 blank). [2], 205 leaves, bound without final blank. Roman types. 57 (1 full-page) woodcut illustrations. The title flanked by 3 woodcut stars and small man-in-moon, on title verso a full-page circular woodcut of a physician demonstrating uroscopic analysis to a student, surrounded by a border of urine glasses with xylographic abbreviated captions of different diagnoses, table on facing page with the same urine glasses with full (unabbreviated) typographic captions; three small cuts at beginning of each part of a physician attending a patient in bed and performing the diagnostic procedure described in that section, several different small woodcuts of urine glasses repeated throughout part 1. Bound in sprinkled calf of c. 1800, spine gilt-tooled and with red morocco label lettered in gilt, boards ruled in gilt, red-sprinkled edges (joints partly split and wormed but cords holding firmly, minor wear to extremities). Annotations in contemporary hand throughout. Text generally quite crisp and clean; several small wormholes at beginning and end affecting text; the final third with light faint dampstaining at foot. Provenance: J.J. Chaponnière (inscribed on first flyleaf). In all a very good copy. ----

RARE FIRST EDITION, PRIVATELY PRINTED AT THE AUTHOR'S PRESS. Pinder was initially active as physicus in Nördlingen, from 1489 to 1493 personal physician to the Saxon elector Frederick the Wise and finally appointed physician to the city of Nuremberg. He was one of the first physicians to disseminate his works with the aid of printing. This diagnostic treatise divided into three sections treating uroscopy, analysis of the pulse, and the various types of fever, was printed on a press that Pinder had installed in his house in 1505, probably by his future son-in-law Friedrich Peypus, who printed at least 11 editions there between 1505 and 1513, mostly of Pinder's works. The types are those of the Printer of the Sodalitas Celtica, with whom Peypus may have learned printing. In 1515 Peypus moved the press - apparently part of his wife's dowry - to a new address; he remained active until 1534 (cf. Benzing pp. 332-333, nos. 12 and 15).
The volume also includes Gilles de Corbeil's Carmina de urinarum judiciis, but omits the epilogue found in Choulant's edition of that text. "Pinder's edition is not listed in Choulant's bibliography of printed editions of Gilles, and contains a number of variant readings not recorded by him" (Durling). Although the woodcut illustration and table of urines were intended to be colored, being not otherwise intelligible, colored copies are rare.
References & Bibliography: Norman 236; NLM/Durling 3652; Waller 7448; Wellcome I, 866. - Visit our website to see more images!