Mexico, 17th-18th century: Medical Compendium

[Tesoro de medicinas, para diversas enfermedades]. Mexico or Spain Wanting conjugate ff. 18 & 23. Further notes on f. 48v and on the paper lining of lower cover. Note of ownership on the latter "Jph. Alfonzo Pisarr[o] Caballero del Lorden de Santiago", presumably the Viceroy of New Granada [1749-53] of that name. A copy without title-page, preliminaries, or biographical colophon, of the Tesoro de medicinas attributed to the learned hermit Gregorio López and printed in the City of Mexico in 1672 and 1674 [see M.79, M.80], and reprinted in Madrid in 1708 and 1727 [Palau 140004-5]. Though it copies the glosses of Salzedo and Dias Brizuela as printed in the 1674 edition (without quoting their names), it omits many complete entries of that edition. Since it also omits parts of larger entries and adds some independent phraseology in ways which do not tally with the 1672 edition, it is likely to be an individual version, perhaps at one or several removes, of either the full 1674 Mexican edition, or of one of the Madrid editions which copied it. Principally a compendium of popular remedies arranged in alphabetical order of symptom, the history of this work, the significance of the many MS copies extant, and its place in Mexican medicine have been fully covered by Guerra (1966).

c.1700

48 Ff. 21 x 15.5 cm. Original limp vellum cover.

Purchased 1914

Described in: Robin Price, An Annotated Catalogue of Medical Americana in the Library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1983).