Bassi, Agostino.

[COOKERY & VITICULTURE] Memoria del dottore Agostino Bassi sui nuovi metodi di vinificazione.

Lodi: Dall Tipografia di Go. Battista Orcesi, 1823. Item #1249

8vo. 220 x 140 mm., [8 ¾ x 5 ¾ inches]. 42, [1] pp. Illustrated with one plate. Bound in blue paper printed wrappers; corners a bit folded, head of spine with small split in paper; otherwise very good.

In Italian agricultural science, the study of wine and cheese production were extremely important and at times controversial. Agostino Bassi was interested both these subjects and as a young man applied his skills at observation to improving the viability of both. This essay on vinification of wine was his first major publication and in it he advocated for methods that had traditionally been ignored by Italian winemakers, especially as the major contributions to the field were coming from France. His study of grapes and the various diseases which attacked the vines continued throughout his career and he combined his methodology to the study of cheese, potatoes, tomatoes, and other agricultural products.

By the end of his career Agostino Bassi (1773-1856) became a highly decorated and internationally recognized scientist. At an early age he was a disciple of Jean-Antoine Chaptal and the application of chemistry to agriculture production. The progress of his research took him from the field of agriculture to the study of bacteria and contagious disease, where he became a pioneer in the field. He was way ahead of his time and his work was not recognized for decades but in the end, before his death, he was honored for his work not only in Italy but other major scientific centers throughout Europe.

“On the subject of contagious diseases he reached general conclusions, the validity of which was then proven several decades later, namely that all contagious diseases of animals and plants, including humans, came from parasitic beings, and that hydrophobia, syphilis, gonorrhea, smallpox, cholera, plague and many, if not almost all, skin diseases were generated and maintained by parasitic beings, whether plants or animals, of different species.” (DBI)

Westbury, Handlist of Italian Cookery Books, p. 22. Paleari Henssler, Maria. Bibliografia Latino-Italiana di Gastronomia, I, p. 71. OCLC cites one copy at UC Davis. See the article by Emanuele Djalma Vitali Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Vol. 7. Inexplicably it is not cited by Niccoli in his section on disease of wines.

Price: $1,200.00