Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 370

GIOVANNI BATTISTA DELLA PORTA (1535?-1615) De humana physiognomonia libri IIII. Apud Josephum Cacchium 1586 [4] 272 (misnumbered 265) pp., illus., port. 32 cm.

A Neapolitan natural philosopher and investigator into many fields of science, Porta was also the author of some of the best Italian comedies of his age. His contributions to optics include the camera obscura and a description of the opera glass. As an early ecologist, he was one of the first to group plants according to their geographical location and distribution in his Phytognomonica (1583). The present work, one of the first on physiognomy, contains a series of woodcuts which show facial resemblances between man and animals with an accompanying text that compares various animal traits to their human counterparts.

Cited references: Cushing P346; Durling 3720; Garrison-Morton 150; Osler 3714; Waller 7566; Wellcome 5196

Gift of John Martin, M.D.