De Tuenda Nobilium Valetudine.
Bononiae: Ex Typographia D. Thomae Aquinatis, 1792. Item #1336 8vo. 215 x 130 mm., [8 ½ x 5 ¼ inches]. 100 [1] pp. Original blue paper wrappers. Title-page vignette entitled “Truth Conquers”. Stamps of Pietro Tonelli, Censor on the final leaf along with the Imprimatur and errata. First edition, followed in 1797 by an edition translated by the author into Italian. Very good copy of Gio. Battista Buldrini’s essays on health, diet, and illness. He begins his book with chapters on the nature of the air and motion and the qualities that contribute to a healthy environment. He follows with a longish chapter on food and another on how the body digests food and eliminates waste. The final two chapters are on sleep as an essential part of a healthy diet, and the nature of disease and how diet contributes to an individuals well-being or illness. Buldrini was one of a growing group of enlightened Italian food writers who were advocating for a balanced diet as a remedy to the condition of the rural poor in Italy’s agricultural regions. Following Antonio Della Porta’s book on preservation methods of food (1772), and Giuseppe Palmieri’s essay on the art of living a healthy and long life (1790), Buldrini was contributing to a better understanding of how agriculture and food culture in general contributed to well-being of society. Rare: OCLC cites copies at the National Library of Medicine and University of Oklahoma; not cited in NUC. The Italian edition is equally as rare.
Maria Paleari Henssler. Bibliografia Latino-Italiana di Gastronomia, pp. 92. 391. John Ballard Blake, A Short Title Catalogue of Eighteenth Century Printed Books in the National Library of Medicine, 1979, p. 71.
Price: $900.00