Luminare maius. Cinthius ut totum radiis illuminat orbem. Illuminat latebras sic medicina tuas.(Colophon: Venice, Gregorio de Gregori, 8 January 1513). Folio (30.5 x 21 cm). With 13 woodcut decorated initials (6 series?) plus 8 repeats, 4-line typographic "Lombarbic" initials. Set in rotunda gothic types in 2 columns, with a preliminary note in roman type. With contemporary pen decorations in brown ink added to about half of the initials and occasional similar pen decorations in the margins, an occasional manuscript paragraph mark, some rubrications in brown ink and some initials coloured with a transparent ochre wash. Early 20th-century vellum.

77, [2], [1 blank] ll.Seventh known copy of an early edition of an important treatise on pharmacology and medical botany, by Giovanni Giacomo Manlio di Bosco (fl. 1490-post 1500). It is a commentary on ancient Arabic and Greek pharmacological works, especially the Arabic treatises of Yuhanna Ibn Masawayh (ca. 777-857), a Nestorian Christian physician from Assyria who taught at the academy in Gundeshapur, Iran, and was personal physician to four caliphs. It gives instructions for preparing numerous medicines, indicating the quantities of the ingredients (simples, each derived from a single plant) and describing each ingredient. The present edition includes Manlio's preliminary note addressed to Bernardinus Niger.The title-page indicates that the book also contains Lumen apothecariorum, a work by Quirico de Augustis de Tortona of Milan (fl. 1486-1497). But it is not present here or in any of the other seven copies we have traced. With contemporary and later marginal manuscript notes. With the text area of B2.7 somewhat browned, an occasional small and unobtrusive stain, and a few small worm holes in the last few leaves, but generally in very good condition. Some of the manuscript notes have been shaved. The binding is slightly dirty and the boards slightly bowed, but the binding is still good.l Durling 2938; ICCU 29621 (same copy); KVK & WorldCat (5 copies); Emiliano Sordano, Il Luminare maius di Manlio del Bosco, thesis, University of Torino, 2010, p. 41; USTC 840112 (2 copies); cf. Schelenz, Geschichte der Pharmazie, p. 414; Wellcome 4017.