# Anfossi, Dell’uso ed abuso della cioccolata, 1779

**Titolo bibliografico:** Dell’uso ed abuso della cioccolata del Dottore Gio: Battista Anfossi romano a sua eccellenza Pier - Vettore Pisani Procurator di S. Marco

**Autore:** Anfossi Giovanni Battista

**Dati editoriali:** Venice, Francesco Locatelli a S. Bartolommeo, 1779

**Codice archivio:** 181

**Prezzo:** 1100.00 USD

**Stato commerciale:** Disponibile

**Link ufficiale:** https://www.govirarebooks.com/products/anfossi-uso-abuso-cioccolata-1779

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## Descrizione accademica e analisi

8vo (198x135 mm). 100 pp. Contemporary plain boards “alla rustica”, inked title on spine. Contemporary ownership entry on front flyleaf “Matteo Zacchiroli”. Bookblock a bit loose. A very good, unsophisticated copy. First edition, second issue, with a reset title-page bearing the Venetian imprint of Francesco Locatelli, reissuing the Rovigo publication of 1775. The earlier issue appeared under the fuller title Dell’uso ed abuso della cioccolata. Dissertazione storico-medica, printed at Rovigo by Gianjacopo Miazzi, and is recorded in the Italian Union Catalogue as SBLE000479. The work had attracted attention outside Italy before its Venetian reissue as it was reviewed in the eighteenth-century learned journal “Gothaische gelehrte Zeitungen”, 1776, volume 5, pp. 282-284. Anfossi identifies himself on the title-page as a Roman physician and addresses the work to Pier-Vettore Pisani, Procurator of St Mark. The original subtitle, dissertazione storico-medica, accurately indicates the conjunction of historical inquiry and medical argument. Rather than treating chocolate solely as a fashionable indulgence, Anfossi considers it a substance whose reputation must be examined through the literature concerning its origins, preparation, and effects. Anfossi surveys competing opinions, drawing particular attention to English writers, including Henry Stubbe, alongside the earlier Spanish-language tradition. As Donatella Lippi observes, his discussion distinguishes adherents of established Galenic explanations from physicians claiming to work within more reasonable systems. Chocolate becomes a subject through which differing medical explanations can be compared, not simply a commodity to be praised or condemned. Anfossi’s treatment also extends beyond drinking chocolate to cocoa butter as a medicinal preparation. Lippi highlights his discussion of its external application in the treatment of inflamed haemorrhoids. This is a revealing distinction: a historical recommendation involving cocoa need not concern the ingestion of a sweetened beverage. Anfossi’s account preserves differences between the drink, its constituent material, and preparations intended for other uses. Pierpaolo Polzonetti provides a complementary reading of the treatise, emphasizing Anfossi’s defence of palatability as well as medicinal utility. He discusses the author’s account of chocolate’s Mexican origins and name, his criticism of explanations resting on the conventional qualities of hot, cold, moist, and dry, and his preference for preparations less heavily spiced than those associated with earlier practice. Anfossi accommodates differences of taste rather than assuming that an effective remedy must be unpleasant. Polzonetti also draws attention to his expansive catalogue of supposed digestive, nourishing, and restorative benefits. The author’s favourable disposition is memorably encapsulated in the phrase attributed to him by the Biblioteca comunale dell’Archiginnasio: “Gli dei bevono ambrosia, gli uomini cioccolata”—“The gods drink ambrosia; men drink chocolate.” The ownership inscription probably refers to Matteo Zacchiroli, a contemporary physician and contributor to the Memorie enciclopediche associated with Giuseppe Compagnoni and Giovanni Battista Ristori.

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## Bibliografia di riferimento

Italian Union Catalogue (SBN), IT\ICCU\SBLE\000480; D. Lippi, “Chocolate in History: Food, Medicine, Medi-Food”, Nutrients, 5, no. 5, 2013, pp. 1573-1584; P. Polzonetti, Feasting and Fasting in Opera: From Renaissance Banquets to the Callas Diet, Chicago and London, 2021, pp. 156-157; pp. 265-266, notes 10, 16-17; A. Mita Ferraro, “Zacchiroli, Francesco”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 100, Rome, 2020, opening paragraph, for his brother Matteo.

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