11 



Piedmontese, whose reputed work was first printed at Basel in 

 153G, in 8vo. It went through a very great number of editions, 

 but although it was one of the most popular of the collections of 

 receipts or secrets, copies of it are now quite unusual in catalogues. 

 The editions were in all likelihood actually worn out by use. The 

 copy here is a comparatively early one, having been printed at 

 Venice in 1568. This collection was translated into English, and 

 the four different pai-ts appeared in succession, the first in 1562, 

 the last in 1578. According to Watt, who gives the titles at 

 length and enumerates different editions,* the secrets ai)peared in 

 every European language. He adds that an abridgement of it 

 was long a ])oj)ular book at the foreign fairs, and Nisard mentions 

 a book which consists of extracts from Albertus Parvus, Cornelius 

 Agrippa and others, but which he thinks is chiefly a rehabilitation 

 of the work of Alexis. f This collection, therefore, is still 

 publishing and selling in France by the pedlars, and flying 

 stationers, as they used to be called. The editions Nisard 

 mentions are of 1837 and 1839. It is hardly necessary to say 

 that however creditable the Don's compilation may have been 

 to the sixteenth centuiy, it gives one but a poor idea of the 

 progress of true physical and medical knowledge among the mass 

 of the people in the nineteenth, that such books can be sold for 

 actual perusal and reference. 



A similar collection to the preceding was made by Gabriello 

 Falloppio, celebrated as an anatomist, who lived between 1523 and 

 1563. The work is entitled " Secret i Diversi," and it appeared 

 after his death in 1566. There is a copy of it here. It contains 

 receipts for preparing different bodies to be used in medicine, for 

 the production of wines, alcoholic extracts of plants, cosmetics and 

 waters. It also explains the chemical treatment of the metals, 

 their alloys, the way of changing their colours, converting them 

 into different kinds of salts and so on. There is no English 

 version of this, so far as I know, but there was a Latin edition, 

 and one in German, Franckfnrt, 1641, of which there is a copy here. 



Two years later, in 1568, there appeared at Venice another 



* An edition of 159."), London, Peter Short, is not mentioned by Watt. 

 It is in small (juarto, black letttr, and reseml)lcs the ISO!) edition of 

 the second part of Oesner's work. There is a copy in the Kuing t'ollection, 

 <ilasgow University Liljraiy. 



+ Cli. Xisaid, " i/islohr ill.-: Linrt Poiii(liiirci<i,'' Paris, iyr)4, 1., \i. •_'•_'."». 



