From head wounds to urinary obstruction

Alonso Romano de Córdoba (fl. 1617–1657).

Recopilacion de toda la teorica, y practica de cirugia, muy importante para los professores della … Ahora contiene de nuevo un tratado de la manera de curar las carnosidades, y callos en la via de la orina.

Madrid, Gregorio Rodríguez, at the expense of Gabriel de León, 1657.

12mo (152 × 105 mm). 8 leaves, 280 pp. With the woodcut device of the bookseller Gabriel de León on the verso of the title-page.

Contemporary limp vellum, the title manuscript-lettered on the spine.

               A rare survival of a wide-ranging Spanish surgical handbook, combining practical instruction with a specialised treatise on urethral obstruction. Romano discusses tumours, wounds, ulcers, contusions, fractures, dislocations, hernias, abscesses and other surgical conditions, with guidance on diagnosis, medicines, dressings and operative treatment. His main text concludes with questions and answers addressing the preceding material. Written in Spanish and explicitly intended for practitioners, the compact volume offers a valuable source for studying how surgical knowledge was organised and communicated beyond Latin-language medical scholarship.

Of particular interest is the additional treatise, beginning on p. 221, compiled by the Valencian surgeon Miguel de Leriza on ‘carnosidades’ and ‘callos’ obstructing the urinary passage. Originally published in 1597, Leriza’s text discusses treatment with candelillas, slender medicated bougies, and caustic preparations. It preserves detailed evidence of the instruments, remedies and manual procedures employed in treating urethral obstruction, well before urology became an independent medical speciality. Its inclusion brings together general surgical instruction and a focused account of a condition that attracted considerable attention among sixteenth- and seventeenth-century surgeons.

First published in 1617, Romano’s manual went through a number of seventeenth-century editions, all very rare today, possibly because of their extensive use in daily practice. Later editions were published in 1638, 1657, 1660, 1665, 1673 and 1674. The 1657 edition that we offer here in its contemporary limp-vellum binding is recorded in copies at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Biblioteca Nacional de España, but outside Spain copies are very illusive, of any edition.

Condition:

Binding darkened, soiled and rubbed, with wear to the edges and corners and remnants of ties. A reused printed leaf bearing Spanish commentary on Virgil on the paste-downs. Contents browned throughout, more heavily in places, with scattered spotting and staining, marginal handling marks and occasional creasing. A well-used copy retaining its contemporary binding.

Reference: Palau 617631.