Polyanthea medicinal. Noticias galenicas, e chymicas, repartidas em tres tratados [...] Quarta vez impressa […].

Introducing drugs from around the world

João Curvo Semedo (1635-1719).

Polyanthea medicinal. Noticias galenicas, e chymicas, repartidas em tres tratados [...] Quarta vez impressa […].

Lisboa Occidental, Na Officina de Antonio Pedrozo Galram, 1727.

Folio in 6s. [60], 312, 317-879, [1 blank], 32, [4], 11, [1 blank], [1], [1 blank] pp. = complete with the advertisement leaf at the end and the 3 plates: an engraved frontispiece showing the Portuguese Royal coat-of-arms by J. Gomez, 1727; a full-page engraved portrait of the Archbishop of Lisbon Luís de Sousa by Claude Duflos, 1701; and an engraved portrait of the author João Curvo Semedo also by J. Gomez, 1727.

Contemporary sheep with gold-tooled spine and raised bands.

An important pioneering Portuguese guide to medicine from around the world. This rare fourth edition is of particular interest because it includes the list of drugs from other continents: Memorial de varios simplices que da India Oriental, da America. & de outras partes do mundo vem ao nosso Reyno. In this list he describes 52 simples (medicinal drugs) that hail from outside Europe, mostly from tropical places in Brazil and Amazonia, Angola, Mozambique and Goa but also Virginia and China. The list was first included in the third edition of 1716, making the one offered here the second edition. It was often removed from copies (see BL 1716 copy) and was probably also published separately without a name and date (see Wellcome copy).
This fourth edition of the Polyanthea medicinal (not in auction records, not in Wellcome) was printed shortly after the death of the author, by his son Ignacio. The text is newly set and predominantly similar to the editions before, but two of the three plates have been replaced by new ones by J. Gomez: the frontispiece and the portrait of Semedo. Artistically these new prints are clearly of lesser quality but interestingly the portrait of Semedo has several books added to it, presenting him not only as a physician but also a prolific author. In editions after this one the text and portraits are back to how they were in the third edition, making the present fourth edition a rather curious anomaly.
Author Semedo was physician to the Royal family and maintained a thriving sideline as an apothecary. This provided him with a very strong network of tradesmen who supplied him with various hitherto unknown medical supplies from faraway places. In this book, his main work, he was able to incorporate influences from non-Western places while still maintaining the appearance of following the European conventions, enabling him to bury citations from African and South Asian healers in the nearly 1000 pages of the compendium. For example, "Semedo had entries in his catalog for the Virginian snake root as a treatment for rattlesnake bites, and the "Tambuape" and "Jamvarandim" roots used by indigenous peoples in Bahia as counter poisons." (see: Berry, p. 41).

Condition: binding worn, preserving the original endpapers. Slight worming to the pastedowns and free endpapers. Slight stain in bottom corner of last couple pages. Contemporary annotation in ink on last free endpaper. Otherwise in very good condition.

Literature: Inocêncio, III, p. 357.; not in Sabin

Benjamin Breen, 'Semedo's sixteen secrets: tracing pharmaceutical networks in the Portuguese tropics'. In: Empires of knowledge, Brill, 2023.

Chelsea L. Berry, Poisoned Relations: Medicine, Sorcery, and Poison Trials in the Contested Atlantic, 1680-1850. Diss. Georgetown University, Washington D.C., 2019.

Hugh Cagle, Assembling the Tropics: Science and medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450-1700. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Map of the sources of drugs in Semedo's Memorial.

Source: Hugh Cagle, Assembling the Tropics: Science and medicine in Portugal's Empire, 1450-1700. Cambridge University Press, 2018, fig. 13.3.