Epiphanie Medicorum. Speculum videndi urinas hominum. Clavis aperiendi portas pulsuum. Berillus discernendi causas & differentias febrium

1506. Title flanked by 3 woodcut stars & a small man-in-the-moon (each hand-colored); on title verso a full-page circular woodcut of a physician demonstrating uroscopic analysis to a student, surrounded by a border of 20 urine glasses with xylographic abbreviated captions of different diagnoses (each hand-colored in different shades); table on Aii with the same urine glasses with full (unabbreviated) typographic captions, each hand-colored; smaller woodcut at beginning of each of three parts depicting a physician attending a patient in bed & performing the diagnostic procedure described in that section (the first finely hand-colored); and numerous woodcuts in the text including many illus. of urine glasses. 2 p.l., ccv leaves (lacking the final leaf — a blank). 4to (214 x 152 mm.), cont. blindstamped calf over wooden beveled boards (a few unimportant wormholes), two (of four) catches, clasps lacking. [Nuremberg: F. Peypus? for the Author, 1506].


First edition, and a very fine copy in a handsome contemporary blindstamped binding of this well-illustrated book, privately printed at the author’s own press. The coloring of the woodcuts is strictly contemporary. This is one of earliest books printed from a physician’s private press, which was set up in Pinder’s home in Nuremberg, where he was city physician.


The three Epiphaniae treat the colors of the urine and their significance, the movement of the heart and pulse, and the various fevers and feverish states caused by emotions and diseases.


This work also includes Gilles de Corbeil’s Carmina de Urinarum Judiciis, but omits the epilogue found in Choulant’s edition of that text. “Pinder’s edition is not listed in Choulant’s bibliography of printed editions of Gilles, and contains a number of variant readings not recorded by him.”–Durling 3652.


A fine copy. Printed bookplate of Anton Jonas Kilianstein (d. 1638), who studied medicine at Ingolstadt. He became professor of anatomy and surgery there and also served as rector of the University (see Hirsch, III, p. 524). Engraved armorial bookplate of Fr. Xav. de Hieber, dated 1773. (Inventory #: 10630)