Dialogo intorno alla cultura della vite, di Francesco Folli da Poppi all’illustrissimo signr Barone Leone Ricasoli.
Firenze: All’Insegna dell Stella, 1670. Item #1437 Folio manuscript on Paper. 300 x 205, [11 ¾ x 8 inches]. [10], 64 pp. Bound in contemporary paste paper boards; covers lightly soiled with age. Textblock beautifully written in one very legible hand. Paper stock shows a water mark “A G” over “C”. This copy with the signature of Conte Piero Perucci. Fair manuscript copy of Francesco Folli’s Dialogo on the grafting and cultivation of grape vines, originally published in 1670. This manuscript contains the entire dialogue between the Padrone, the Fattore and the Lavoratore that appears in the printed edition, with the exception of the final leaves of licenses from the Vicar General and the Inquisitor. The title-page reads the same in both the manuscript and the printed book Francesco Folli (1624-1685) from the town of Poppi east of Florence and went to local schools where he excelled in the sciences. He was very interested in the natural world and studied agriculture, minerology, medicine and astronomy. He entered the University of Pisa and received his medical degree in 1650. While continuing to practice medicine he became interested in Harvey’s book on the circulation of the blood and began to study the arguments for and against the idea of transfusion which members of the medical community were debating at the time. In 1654 in a letter to the Grand Duke Ferdinand II de’Medici he made an assertion about the biological compatibility of similar plants that was required to successfully graft hardy roots to vines. He made the association between grafting compatible elements in plants to the potential for blood transfusions in patients with compatible blood characteristics. This was first announced to the medical world in 1670 with the publication of his Dialogo intorno alla cultura della vite . If one looks on the recto of leaf 40 in this manuscript and on page 44 in the printed edition, the Padrone tells the story of the letter to Ferdinand II and his assertion about “la transfusion del sangue”. "One of the other (inventions), which I liked very much, for the greatness of the thought and the usefulness, I have always anxiously desired and believed possible, although I had not experienced it myself, and that was blood transfusion . . " (Simili) Some historians of medicine recognize Folli’s letter of 1654 as the first assertion of this hypothesis. But for other, because it was not until 1670 when the Dialogo was published, they see him as late to the game and he is not universally acknowledged for his insight and experimentation. Both the manuscript and the book are dedicated to Baron Leone Risacola, who family began making wine in 1141 at the Castello di Brolio in Tuscany and is considered the olds privately held winery in Italy. Today the family is still making Chianti wine, with the Sangiovese grape, an innovation initiated by Baron Benedetto Riscola in the 1860’s and which has become the standard for making finely produced Chianti wines. Gabriella Belloni Speciale. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani - Volume 48 (1997). Alessandro Simili. Origine e Vicende della Trasfusione del Sangue. Considerazioni Storico Critiche. . Bologna: Cooperativa Tipografica Azzoguidi, 1933. See also the Museo Galileo website for biographical information on Folli. For the printed edition of 1670 see Maria Paleari Henssler, Bibliografia Latino-Italiana di Gastronomia, I p. 302, II p. 487* (with the asterisk signaling that this title of particular interest). See also the Hathi Trust digital copy from the University of California at Davis, the only copy of the 1670 edition list in an American library. Not cited in NUC.
Price: $4,750.00