19th Century "Trattato di fortificazione e d'artiglieria" (Military Architecture and Artillery treatise)

Another military art jewel, a 19th century rare manuscript about fortifications, bastions and citadels architecture with a treatise about artillery and ballistics, all in one. Written in Italian with elegant calligraphy, has around 30 detailed full page illustrations and starts with an introduction of geometrics (basics rules to erect pentagons, hexagons, heptagons, etc that are used later to design fortifications, most of them by the sea or close to rivers). This manuscript has extraordinary similarities to the other military architecture treatise I posted last October (by Spanish Captain Cristobal de Rojas), named Theory and Practice of Fortifications.

Unfortunately, don’t have author’s name. I’ll update this post if my investigation goes further. I recommend a complete an amazing web page about classical military architecture (forts, arms & armour…): http://www.militaryarchitecture.com/ 

15th Century Medicine treatise (or the importance of urine)

Urine sample color inspection

This manuscript from 15^th century is a compilation about medicine texts.

It has a complete collection about urine characteristics in order to diagnose human diseases, an authentic “medieval urine analysis guideline”. This parameter was one of the most important medical indicator for centuries, as human body was considered sacred for main religions and open surgery was not allowed. There’s a very nice chapter in Noah Gordon best-seller “The Physician” in which Avicena (Abu Ali at Husain Ibn Abdullah Ibn Sina) explains urine importance during a medicine class at the Madraza in Isfahan.

Second extraordinary characteristic for this manuscript is the fact that contains a collection of detailed “wound man” illustrations. This kind of representations, first appeared in European surgical texts during middle ages, laid out schematically the various wounds a warrior or knight might suffer during battles, with accompanying texts stating treatments for the various different injuries.

MaOther examples of “wound man” medical manuscripts are “Fasciculus Medicinae” by Johannes of Ketham (Venice, 1492) and “Fieldbook of wound surgery” by Hans von Gersdorff (Strasbourg in 1519). See some examples (wikipedia) here.