Hermippus redivivus: or, The sage's triumph over old age and the grave, wherein, a method is laid down for prolonging the life and vigour of man. Including a commentary upon an antient inscription, in which this great secret is revealed by Cohausen, Johann Heinrich - 1749

The Lamb, against Catherine Street in the Strand: J. Nourse, 1749. [Upper cover detached]. Small octavo, pp [viii], 248, slightly age-toned but remarkably clean internally, bound in an unusual later binding, probably late Victorian, quarter morocco and cloth, slightly worn and marked; however the upper cover is detached. [Cohausen [1665-1750] was a physician and well-known author in Germany, France, and England . He was best known for medical satire such as the Pica Nasi, a Latin parody on snuff in which Apollo ordered Mercury to confiscate the noses of snuff-takers. When the satyrs returned them, the desperate victims grabbed the wrong noses and were unrecognizable. Cohausen’s last and most famous medical satire, his Hermippus redivivus (1742), is a treatise on the prolongation of life. Studies of Cohausen and the Hermippus have been largely antiquarian; the only scholarly works are a French dissertation concerning his medical biography done in 1900 and a short German bibliographic study. Because Cohausen has been primarily known for medical satire, his large number of serious treatises on iatrochemistry and medicine, which served as the basis for his more humorous works, have been largely unexamined. The Hermippus and its comedic presentation of longevity had a profound reliance on earlier scholarly works of his that analysed the theories of the seventeenth-century chymist and physician Jean Baptiste van Helmont (1577-1634).. Second edition. Quarter leather. Good.