Tratado da Conservação da Saúde dos Povos (A Treaty on the Conservation of Public Health)
Paris: and sold in Lisbon at the shop of Bonardel and Du Beux, 1756. First edition. Hardcover. Octavo (19.6 by 12.1 cm). XIII, [3], 293, [1] pp. Decorative headpieces and initials. Contemporary calf (rubbed and worn at extremities; upper board slightly bowed), gilt-tooled spine with raised bands, morocco lettering piece; edges stained red; marbled endleaves. Occasional light stains, else a good copy in a worn, but intact, binding.
First edition of this remarkable treatise on public health, written at the request of Portuguese first minister, Marquis of Pombal, in the wake of the devastating 1755 Lisbon earthquake. In the appendix the author explains his theory of earthquakes and demonstrates how the Lisbon climate has improved since the catastrophe (Doria).
Born in Portugal into a converso family of Penamacor (Castello Branca), António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches began his medical studies in Salamanca. He returned to Portugal where he practiced medicine for a short time, only to flee the Inquisition in 1726. He eventually settled in the Netherlands, where he studied medicine with the celebrated Herman Boerhaave at the University of Leiden. Boerhaave held Sanches in such high regard that he dedicated the second edition of his Praelectiones (Göttingen, 1745) to his young Portuguese protegé. "When Empress Ivanovna of Russia requested Boerhaave (1731) to send a learned physician who would be competent to act as her medical adviser, he recommended Sanchez, who entered her service the same year. The empress was so pleased with Sanchez that she appointed him chief physician of the Cadets; and soon after he was elected member of the Imperial Academy of Science" (Friedenwald). Sanches lived in Russia for more than sixteen years. In 1747 "he was forced to leave St. Petersburg after Czarina Elizabeth Petrovna, an antisemite, discovered Sanchez' Jewish origins. He then went to Paris and resumed his medical practice in the poorer sections of the city. In 1762, when Catherine II came to power, she granted him a life pensions of 1,000 rubles annually in belated recognition of his faithful service to the royal court" (Enc. Jud.). Sanches lived the last 36 years of his life in Paris. "He wrote intensely and actively; he kept in contact with the European masters and influenced the cultural environment of his time. In medicine, he is remembered primarily by the studies he developed on venereal diseases (syphilis), and the exchange he established with Chinese medicine [through the Jesuits]; by the reorganization of medical studies in Russia (Moscow and St Petersburg) and at the University of Strasburg" (Doria). His vast personal archives, correspondence, and published works attest to his broad interests which included public health and hygiene, political and social organization, and pedagogy. His wide social network which grew out of his long-lasting connections with the St. Petersburg Academy came to include members of the Russian and Portuguese diplomatic circles, as well as members of the upper Russian aristocracy. He also maintained notable contacts with the Encyclopedists, "particularly Diderot and d'Holbach" (Dulac), contributing to the article on smallpox found in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert (1751). Good-. Item #31789
References: Blake (NLM 18th cent.), p. 399; J. L. Doria, "Antonio Ribeiro Sanches, A Portuguese doctor in 18th century Europe" [in:] Vesalius VII, no. 1, (2001), pp. 27-35; G. Dulac, "Science et politique: Les réseaux du Dr António Ribeiro Sanches (1699-1783)" [in:] Cahiers du Monde russe, vol. 43, no. 2/3 (Apr.-Sep., 2002), abstract; H. Friedenwald, The Jews and Medicine (1967), pp. 757-8; Silva, Diccionário bibl. portuguez, A 1164.
Full title and imprint: Tratado de conservaçaô da saude dos povos: obra util, e igualmente necessaria a os magistrados, capitaens generails, capitaens de mar, e guerra, prelados, abbadessas, medicos, e pays de familias: com hum appendix consideraçoins sobre os terremotos, com a noticia dos mais consideraveis, de que fas mençaô na Europa desde o 1 de Novembre 1755. Em Paris, e se vende em Lisboa, em casa de Bonardel e du Beux, mercadores de livros. M.DCC.LVI. [1756].
Price: $2,250.00