Recetario medicinal espagírico, Obra posthuma

First edition, 8vo. Full period vellum, manuscript title on the spine. 40 unpaginated leaves, 178 pp., +5 pp. of tables (in accordance with the example consulted at the CRAI of Barcelona). First edition of the important posthumous work by Fray Diego Bercebal, “Chief Infirmarian at the Royal Convent of San Francisco of Zaragoza”, which was first published in the year 1713 and republished in the year 1734 without changes from the previous edition. This work is considered one of the first works of nursing science in Spain and is structured in “counsels” or “notices” that gather the fundamentals of nursing work in the convent and other emergency situations. The work allows us to learn about the nursing practised by the religious infirmarians, since it compiles a large number of medicinal compounds and chemical preparations, some of them created by the author himself, such as a medicine with analgesic effects for terminally ill and dying patients. It is, therefore, a chemical-pharmacological manual, useful for nurses and carers, in which not only the composition of the medicine is explained, but also its form of administration and possible side effects. In addition to the dense content of its 178 pages of text, the work contains relevant information in its prefatory pages about the work, tasks and functions of the religious who attend to nursing. Finally, and although the title refers directly to alchemy (spagyric is the name given to the production of medicines from plants using alchemical procedures), the present work shows a clear turn towards modern chemical medication. Very scarce. Only two examples of the first edition are recorded in WorldCat, both in Spain (BNC and CRAI – Barcelona), and the municipal library of Zaragoza possesses another example. No sale record of this book is known in the last hundred years, apart from our example.