Dissertation sur l'origine de la maladie venerienne (Dissertation on the Origin of Venerial Disease)
Paris: Durand / Pissot, 1752. First French edition. Hardcover. Octavo (7 by 10.8 cm). Collation: [pi]2-4 A-G8 (= 59 leaves; lacks half-title); [6, title & privilege], 110, [2, privilege] pp. Later half calf over marbled boards; spine with raised bands and gilt morocco lettering pieces; marbled edges and endleaves; silk ribbon marker. Mild wear at cover extremities, else a fine, very amply-margined copy.
Anonymously-published second edition of the author's first published work, originally written in French and here appearing in its original French version. An English translation was published in the prior year under the title: A Dissertation on the Origin of the Venereal Disease... Translated from the Original Manuscript of an Eminent Physician (London: for R. Griffiths, 1751). The present work is the first of two short treatises on the history and origin of venereal disease (syphilis) written by the physician and polymathic writer António Nunes Ribeiro Sanches (1699-1783). The second treatise, Examen historique sur l'apparition de la maladie vénérienne en Europe (An Historical Examination on the Appearance of Venereal Disease in Europe), was published at Lisbon in 1774. Through the kind efforts of his friend, Hieronymus David Gaubius (1705-1780), both treatises were republished at Sanches' request in a joint edition at Leiden in 1777. That edition was the first to declare Sanches' authorship at the title-page.
Thankfully, editor Gaubius provides in his introduction fascinating details about the history of these works and the controversy to which they gave rise: We learn that Sanches was prompted to write these dissertations because he did not believe that venereal disease (syphilis) was brought back to Europe from North America in the wake of the first explorations led by Christopher Columbus. This was a commonly-held belief, especially after the appearance of Jean Astruc's Traitè sur les Maux Veneriens (Paris, 1736). "There were, however, some who did not find Mr. Astruc's assertion sufficiently founded. Some believing that on a still doubtful thing nothing should be decided, preferred to suspend their judgment. Others denied that this disease had always been unknown in the Old World, before the discovery of the New, and they claimed that its symptoms had been described for a long time, by the most ancient Doctors. Others finally, with the authors who examined and described it as soon as it appeared and spread in Europe, considered it as an epidemic disease, which took its origin among us, by common causes, like any other epidemic. Among those who embraced this latter sentiment, Mr. Sanches stood out, who, making use of his vast erudition, composed and published on this subject, the first of the Dissertations that we find here [i.e., Dissertation sur l'origine de la maladie venerienne]." According to Gaubius, the Dutch physician Gerard van Swieten (1770-1772) read Sanches' first treatise in the 1751 English translation. Vehemently disagreeing with Sanches' conclusions, Van Swieten published a refutation which appears in the fifth volume of his Commentaries on Boerhaave's Aphorisms (1772). In response to this challenge, Sanches published his second treatise in 1774.
August Hirsch believed that Sanches' most important printed writings dealt with venereal disease: "[H]e... developed completely correct ideas about the state and international prophylaxis of venereal diseases. He remained convinced of the teachings about visceral syphilis, especially the disease of the brain and nerves as a result of syphilis, informed by extensive experience at the sickbed." Sanches' Observations sur les maladies vénériennes was edited and published at Paris by Charles-Louis-François Andry in 1785, from a large trove of manuscripts he obtained after the author's death.
Born in Portugal into a converso family of Penamacor (Castello Branca), Antonio 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).
A note on the publication date: In the Leiden reprint (1774) of Sanches' two dissertations cited above we are told that the first edition of our Dissertation sur l'origine de la maladie venerienne appeared at Paris in 1750. Thus we find in Hirsch (Biographisches Lexikon, 1887) and Encyclopedia Judaica. Nevertheless, despite careful perusal of the most important digital databases, no trace of a 1750 edition of the present work is to be found. We think it likely that the 1752 edition is in fact the first appearance of the original French version and that the origin of this error may be explained by the 23 Oct. 1750 date which appears on the privilege.
Provenance: The ink entry of Frank Rede Fowke appears at the front paste-down; Fowke wrote the historic notes which appear in The Bayeux Tapestry, Reproduced in Autotype Plates (London: Arundel Society, 1875). Near fine. Item #54458
References: 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; A. Hirsch, Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte aller Zeiten und Völker, vol. 5 (1887): p. 164. A. Sanches, Dissertation sur l'origine de la maladie vénérienne... suive de l'examen historique sur l'apparition de la maladie véneérienne en Europe... Nouvelle edition, revuë & corrigée (Leiden: A. Koster, 1777), preface. Not in Keyserling; not in Blake (NLM 18th cent.), which does, however, locate the 1774 Examen historique.
Full title and imprint: Dissertation sur l'origine de la maladie venériénne, pour prouver que le mal n'est pas venu d'Amérique, mais qu'il a commencé en Europe, par une épidémie. A Paris: chez Durand, rue Saint Jacques, au griffon / Pissot, fils, quai des Augustins, à la sagesse, M.D.CC.LII. [1752].
Price: $6,500.00