[Medical Manuscript].
55, [19] pp. Manuscript on paper in brown and blue ink in one hand, 22 lines to a full page. Five texts roughly bound together in 19th-century calf-backed marbled boards. Manuscript notes throughout. Ownership inscriptions of Augustin Briffault, medical officer of the French army in Italy, dated 1813, 1818, and 1830. Item #19853
[With:]
SAINT-PIERRE, Denis de
Petit manuel des prétendus incurables. Paris: the Author [1830].
16mo. 31 pp.
[With:]
TISSOT, Simon André
L’Onanisme, dissertation sur les maladies produites par la masturbation. Paris: André 1802.
2 parts in 1. 16mo. xviii, 129; 166 pp.
[With:]
CHAUMONNOT, Charles-Albert
Le Médecin des maladies secretes. Paris: the Author 1835. 60 pp.
[With:]
Poudre temperante contre les échauffemens. Paris: s.n. ca. 1820.
1°. 1 pp.
An army medical officer’s homemade field guide, compiled from 30 years of experience, located and dated to the Franco-Italian conflict of 1813-14. Augustin Briffault, État-General of the 20th infantry regiment of the French army in Italy, used this book to take notes and list pharmaceutical recipes about the maladies he commonly encountered among his soldiers, most of which were venereal or digestive. He includes information about nutrition and cleanliness, as well as the safe preparation and eating of regional foods.
The printed texts he had bound in also address venereal diseases as well as other “secret” afflictions like hemorrhoids, constipation, and gout. It is understandable that the longest part of the sammelband is Tissot’s treatise on the dangers of masturbation and how to ameliorate them, as the French troops over which Briffault was charged were camped out at the foothills of the Alps for about two years. The owner of this book also bound in two broadsides advertising medical powders to abate infections, inflammations, and rashes, also common among soldiers. This is a fascinating witness to the medical and hygienic needs of the French army during wartime, and of a field physician’s capabilities on the road.
Price: $2,950.00