SILENI ALCIBIADIS.* I.E. ARS SANANDI, CUM EXPECTATIONE. OPPOSITA ARS CURANDI NUDA EXPECTATIONE: SATYRA HARVEANA CASTIGATAE. CUPIDUS PRUDENTI USUI: STUPIDIS RUDENTI LUSUI. . .

Paris: Fr. Horth-hemels, 1730. Hardcover. Very good. [10],246 pp. plus frontispiece and two folding tables. In Latin. Early three-quarter vellum and speckled paper over boards, raised bands, manuscript paper title and shelf labels. Early shelf number inscription in front free endpaper, light institutional inkstamp in title page. Lightly rubbed, extremities worn. Very good.

George Ernest Stahl’s influential Latin edition of Gideon Harvey’s ARS CURANDI MORBOS EXPECTATIONE (first published in English in 1689). Stahl published both ARS CURANDI and his own critical response, ARS SANANDI CUM EXPECTATIONE, with a combined title page under the heading, SILENI ALCIBIADIS. The present example corresponds with Waller 4082: Harvey’s work alone, issued with the combined title and without a separate ARS CURANDI title leaf.

Gideon Harvey (ca. 1640 – ca. 1700) served as physician to Charles II and “physician of the tower” to William and Mary. Despite his connection to the Crown, Harvey was never a member of the College of Physicians and, during most of his career, operated in a hostile relationship with it. His ironically titled ARS CURANDI, CUM EXPECTATIONE (“The Art of Curing Diseases by Expectation”) presents a series of “random criticisms of medical practice,” which the DNB notes “acquired some reputation on the continent, through the patronage of a far greater man, George Ernest Stahl.” While the DNB authors interpreted Stahl’s approach to Harvey as sympathetic, his publication of ARS SANANDI and notes in ARS CURANDI are at least satirical. His allusion to Erasmus and Plato in the title of SILENI ALCIBIADIS suggests Stahl’s view that behind the “ridiculous face” of doctors painted by Harvey was an opposite reality—a profession “beautiful, serious, venerable.”

Cushing S383n. HEIRS TO HIPPOCRATES 455n. DNB XXV, p. 87.