Details

Subjects:

Medicine -- Early works to 1800.
Medicine.

Form/Genre:

Codices.
Anthologies.
Excerpts.
Manuscripts, Portuguese.
Manuscripts, European.

Language:

Portuguese with manuscript title in Latin and excerpt titles and quotations in Latin, French, and English.

Biography/History:

Portuguese physician, born in Bragança in approximately 1722; student of philosophy and medicine at the Universidade de Coimbra; a New Christian of Jewish descent who was twice examined and once imprisoned by the Portuguese Inquisition and left Lisbon for Paris after 1754. He recorded a visit to Lisbon in 1774 (p. 320).

Summary:

Collection of excerpts and notes in Portugese, largely medical and scientific, drawn both from professional publications and from works of more general interest including works of natural history and expedition accounts. The books and journals used as sources are extremely varied: dated throughout the 18th century with a few references to earlier works and many citations to contemporary publications; written in multiple languages, most frequently Latin, French, and English; and published in Paris, Rouen, Amsterdam, Delft, Leiden, London, Edinburgh, Vienna, Madrid, Lisbon, and even in one case in Philadelphia (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1771, p. 1). The manuscript seems to be incomplete, ending with a dangling catchword. A sewn gathering laid in the volume contains two tables of contents, one titled Index auctorum librorumve excerptorum in Adversariorum nostrorum pars I, the other titled Excerptorum memorabilium elenchus. Each table of contents covers the whole volume, neither extending beyond the extant manuscript. Laid in the gathering is a single leaf of rough copies of excerpts from Charles Marie de la Condamine's Journal du voyage fait par ordre du roi à l'équateur that correspond in part to final copies in the manuscript (p. 289). Paper very brittle due to ink oxidation.

Notes:

Ms. codex.
Title from caption title (p. 1).
Pagination: Paper, 301 + i leaves; [i-xvi], 1-150, 151-168 (paginated but blank), 169-236, 237-240 (paginated but blank), 241-322, [323-576, unpaginated and blank]; original pagination in ink, modern pagination in pencil, upper outer corners.
Layout: Written in 49-51 long lines; quarto format.
Script: Written in cursive script by José Alvares da Silva.
Watermark: Van Der Ley, with an inverted V centered above the name.
Binding: 18th-century leather, gilt spine with title Adversar. pars I.
Origin: Written in Paris circa 1772-1774; dates of sources of excerpts range from 1700 (p. 26) to journals issued in 1771 (p. 2, 17) and 1772 (p. 39, 138, 170); a note recording a visit to Lisbon is dated 1774 (p. 320).

Penn Provenance:

Formerly owned by antiquarian bookdealer and collector Alfonso Cassuto (Lisbon; bookplate inside upper cover; notes inside upper cover; embossed stamp, p. 1, 321, note); probably purchased in 1971 (date inside upper cover).

Cited as:

UPenn Ms. Codex 1655

Contributor:

Cassuto, Alfonso, 1910-1990, former owner.
Alfonso Cassuto Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

OCLC:

900227240