Materia Medica, Liber I. de Plantis.

rare

First edition of this rare work on medicinal plants by the founder of modern taxonomy. With the attractive frontispiece depicting an apothecary's shop, and the folding plate illustrating a plant of the genus ophiorrhiza with a cobra. WorldCat locates ten institutional copies, and six appear in auction records this century.

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), physician and botanist at Uppsala University, 'set out the first truly practical system of botanical classification, based upon the number and relative consistency of a plant's sexual organs. He also introduced a consistent system of binomial nomenclature (generic name coupled with a specific epithet) which he originally applied to plants' (Hook & Norman, The Norman Library of Science and Medicine 1359). This was laid out in full in his major work, Systema naturae, published as a series of broadsides beginning in 1735, with the addition of zoology in the tenth edition. The present work, specifically on plants with pharmaceutical uses, was published in 1749, and incorporates the Linnean system in its descriptions of over five hundred species. Additional volumes on minerals and animals were planned but never published.

First edition, 8vo (19.5 x 11.5 cm), engraved frontispiece and folding plate, ownership signature cut from top edge of title, mid-19th century ownership inscriptions to title and a couple of leaves of text, contents tanned and spotted; recently rebound in brown half morocco with paste paper boards, title to spine and 5 raised bands gilt, endpapers renewed, edges dyed red, a very good copy; 252pp.