Regole della sanità et della natura de cibi. Di Ugo Benzo medico, & filosofo Sanese. Con le annotationi di Gio. Lodovico Bertaudo Medico delle Sereniss. Altezze di Savoia. Opera utile, ornata di varie storie, et arricchita d'un trattato nuovo della ebbrietà, & dell'abuso del Tabaco

16mo (mm. 122x87). Pp. [32], 850 [i.e. 800]. Signatures: †-†8 A-Ddd8. Printer's device on the title page. Woodcut initials. Contemporary limp vellum binding with four raised bands, yapp edges, and manuscript title on the spine (spine slightly darkened). Ex-libris of Jacques and Hélène Bon. Ownership inscriptions on the front free endpaper, one of which is dated 1763. Light scattered foxing, slight stain on the outer margin of the last leaves, but an excellent and genuine copy.

This is the first edition of the treatise on dietetics and hygiene by the Sienese physician Ugo Benzi, accompanied by annotations from the Turin-based physician Giovanni Lodovico Bertaldi, who also contributed an appendix, printed here for the first time, addressing the misuse of alcohol and tobacco. The edition was reprinted in Turin two years later.

The Tractato utilissimo circa la conservazione della sanitade by Ugo Benzi, first printed in Milan in 1481, was among the earliest works on hygiene and dietetics to be published in Italian. It is likely that this work, for which no manuscript copies exist, was initially composed in Latin and subsequently translated into Italian by Benzi himself or another author. The reappearance of Benzi's work in Turin in 1618 is a testament to its enduring relevance and simultaneously indicates that ordinary medical practice lagged at least a century behind the advancement of scientific theory. A sort of compendium of Galenic diet, the work discusses air, physical exercise, sleep, and nutrition, with the majority devoted to a detailed description of the properties, qualities, and medicinal uses of various foods and beverages, arranged alphabetically up to the entries for “sugar,” “grape,” and “wine.”

Bertaldi's appendix addresses exotic foods, the “passions of the soul” (including love, anger, fear, jealousy, hope, hatred, ambition, avarice, envy, and sadness), and proceeds to consider the abuse of tobacco and alcohol, adding several remedies for inebriation not mentioned by Benzi, some rather harsh, such as the practice in Geneva of spinning drunkards on a giant wheel until they vomited.

Ugo Benzi was born in Siena in 1376. His uncle Marco was a renowned physician in Siena. The economic conditions of his father Andrea, a magistrate by profession, were favourable until his faction was defeated and war broke out between Siena and Florence, leading to his ruin and imprisonment for debt, from which his son would free him in 1405. After attending the grammar school of a certain Bennazio in Siena, he likely moved to Florence in 1393, where he began studying philosophy, continuing later in Bologna under Pietro Mantovano, with whom he had a falling out in 1394 for unclear reasons. Following this dispute, Benzi retired to his home, dedicating himself to the study of logic, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music, grammar, and rhetoric. He then moved to Pavia, where in 1396 he graduated in logic and philosophy and shortly thereafter began teaching logic until 1402. Subsequently called to the University of Bologna, Benzi reorganised the teaching of philosophy, promoting the study of the works of Averroes and Albertus Magnus. In Bologna, he also studied medicine under Marsilio of S. Sofia. In February 1405, Benzi was engaged by the University of Siena to teach medicine. In 1409, having fallen under suspicion by the rulers, Benzi left Siena and entered the service of Cardinal Baldassarre Cossa as a physician, following him first to Pisa, then to Bologna. Later, called to Parma by Niccolò d'Este, shortly after the reopening of the university, which was due to him, in November 1412, Benzi taught medicine in that city for four consecutive years, years particularly fervent with work; during this time, he wrote three of his principal commentaries, on Galen, the aphorisms of Hippocrates, and Avicenna, as well as some Quaestiones rerum naturalium. Recalled to Siena, where he was absolved of all previous accusations, Benzi taught there from 1416 until 1421, when he moved first to Florence, then again to Bologna, where he remained until 1425. In November 1425, Benzi was engaged by Filippo Maria Visconti as an ordinary professor of medicine in the morning at the University of Pavia, a position he held until the year 1428-29. Benzi left Pavia after completing the reading of the aphorisms of Hippocrates, leaving the commentary on Avicenna incomplete, to go to the University of Padua, during which period a dissection of a cadaver is noted (1430). Shortly thereafter, he moved to Ferrara, called by Niccolò d'Este as a court physician, without however holding a university chair. The teaching must have been conducted only privately and occasionally; among his disciples was Angelo Decembrio, whose treatise on the plague bears the title De cognitione et curatione pestis egregia Ugone praeceptore. From 9 February to 6 May 1439, under the protection of Niccolò d'Este, Benzi made his last visit to Siena, received with great honours. A few months later, on 30 November 1439, he died in Ferrara.

Benzi's fame is primarily linked to his qualities as a practical physician and as a master and scholar of theoretical medicine; although he is not distinguished for novel discoveries, nor for absolute novelty of thought, he nevertheless demonstrates a vast knowledge of medical doctrine and uncommon technical-therapeutic experience. His Consilia saluberrima ad omnes aegritudines, a broad series of clinical cases chosen to interest a wide sector of medicine, constitute one of the earliest examples we have of systematic collections of various diseases. He was also the author of commentaries on some fundamental medical texts studied in universities: on Galen, the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, the Canon of Avicenna (cf. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 8, Rome, 1966, s.v.).