Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 402

PASCAL LECOQ (1567-1632) Bibliotheca medica. Per Conradum Waldkirch 1590 [32] 457 [1] pp. 16.5 cm.

Le Coq, often referred to by his Latin cognomen of Paschalis Gallus, was a native of Poitiers where he received his medical degree in 1597. He had considerable knowledge of medicine and its literature as a student since the present work was published seven years before he completed his medical training. This work was the first attempt at bibliography to follow that of Gesner (see No. 307 ff.). The main portion of the book is an alphabetical author list of medical books which were written in Latin. Le Coq borrowed freely from Gesner and each of his entries has a brief annotation taken from Bibliotheca universalis. Following this section of over 1200 authors, Le Coq classifies his bibliography and lists medical writers who wrote works in French, Italian, German, as well as those who wrote commentaries on Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, and Dioscorides. He concludes the book with lists of medical authors who wrote about such subjects as surgery, anatomy, botany, therapeutics, plague, and syphilis. His work was an important contribution to the development of medical bibliography because it was the first general bibliography of medicine to provide useful information with each entry. Le Coq's work is here bound together with Spach's Nomenclator scriptorum medicorum (see No. 390). The individual responsible for having them bound together must have appreciated the complementary nature of Le Coq's author approach and Spach's subject arrangement.

See Related Record(s): 307 390

Cited references: Cushing L115; Durling 2749; Garrison-Morton 6743.1; Waller 18642; Wellcome 2670

Gift of John Martin, M.D.