TRATTATO DELLE VARIE SPECIE DI CHOLERA-MORBUS

8vo, pp. [x], [i] errata, [i] blank, iii-clxxix, [i] blank, [iv] repeated pages, 78; some gatherings uniformly browned due to paper quality, but otherwise, aside from very occasional light spotting, clean and fresh throughout; in contemporary red boards, spine ruled and lettered in gilt; very slight wear, but an attractive copy with the book-label of the château de Barante on front paste-down.

A lovely copy of this comprehensive survey of the theory and practice of the treatment of cholera, by the Italian physician and patriot Michele Buniva (1761-1834), with a supplement in French containing observations on the 1818 epidemic in Bengal by the French naval surgeon J.J. Deville.

The boy of Buniva's study is divided into three parts: the first discusses the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of cholera, examining its relationship with other diseases such as yellow fever, the relationship with humidity, and the notion that it cholera is sui generis, unlike any other kind of contagion. Buniva examines the efficacy of treatments ranging from hot and cold baths to camphor and morphine, before in the second part presenting a number of historical studies of outbreaks from 1817 onwards, in India, Russia, and western Europe. The third part offers a survey of various methods of preventing, or at least minimising, contagion.

Buniva was exiled in Paris for five years from 1800, where he served on the Parisian vaccination committee, in which capacity he travelled to England to study the work of Jenner. After Napoleon's annexation of Piedmont, he returned to Turin, and did much to implement a vaccination program in Piedmont.

Outside Continental Europe, OCLC records copies at Rochester, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and NLM.