An upcoming Christie’s auction will include several copies of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’ De proprietatibus rerum. CHRISTIE'S IMAGES LTD. 2024

Not too long ago, the Wall Street Journal reported on the “hot market” for rare early medical texts, citing last year’s $2.2 million sale (after a $1.2 million high estimate) of a 1555 copy of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem by Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius at Christie’s. Realistically, the market for these historical encyclopedias, anatomical atlases and surgical manuals is rarely that hot, if only because there aren’t enough early editions of books like Francisco Bravo’s Opera Medicinalia, Nicolò Gervasi’s Antidotarium Panormitanum and William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis to go around. (Only a single copy of Opera Medicinalia, the first medical text printed in the Americas, remains from its original printing.) And it’s worth noting that the mega-million copy of the Fabrica was annotated by Vesalius himself.

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There is, however, no shortage of somewhat less rare, less........

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