Sanitatis Produmus Vitae Nuncius Rurales Lucubrationes Pestilentiae Tempore

Giovanni Battista Verri; Johann Baptista Verri E Vigiano; (Verrus); Giovanbattista Verri da Viggiano

Neapoli, Apud Novellum de Bonis, 1662

Folio, 31 cm. Contemporary limp vellum, ink spine title. Soiling to vellum. Front hinge tender. [12], 328, [19] pp, engraved portrait on title. Printed in double columns. Spotting and toning to pages. Marginal dampstain to first 90 leaves.  A rare and scarce Italian treatise on communicable diseases and epidemics.

After the Naples Plague of 1656-57, there was an surge of medical treatises printed in Italy. Notably, Athanasius Kircher's, "Scrutinium physico-medicum contagiosae luis quae dicitur pestis" Rome in 1658 and Tommaso Cornelio's "Progumnasmata physica," in 1663.  It was only with the forcible quarantine of the poorer districts, and the extraordinary efforts of Martinus Ludheim that the bubonic plague was eradicated in the Kingdom.  Of 20,000 inhabitants of the city of Naples, the plague took 7,000-12,000 lives.  Mortality rates were an incredible 870,000-1.25 million within the Kingdom of Naples. 

Krivatsky 12310; Wellcome V, page 344.