Prospero Alpini of Marostica, Physician: Dialogue on Balsam

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Original title: Prosperi Alpini Marosticensis medici De balsamo dialogus A short Latin philosophical-medical dialogue on the balsam plant and its three commercial derivatives — opobalsamum (the juice), carpobalsamum (the fruit), and xylobalsamum (the twigs). Set at dawn in the garden of Matarea outside Cairo, it stages a conversation among Alpini himself, the Egyptian physician Abdella, and the Jewish physician Abdachim. Against the prevailing Italian medical opinion that the balsam of Dioscorides and Theophrastus had become extinct, the dialogue argues that the plant still lives, cultivated near Cairo and growing spontaneously in Arabia Felix, and that the drug carried by caravan and sold in shops is the ancient one. It appeals to residence, named local informants, caravan itineraries, gifted and retained samples, and repeatable trials (dissolution in water or milk, staining of cloth) over the printed authority of the ancients; harmonizes conflicting classical descriptions through a scheme of four 'ages' of the sap; explains the drug's scarcity by Ottoman fiscal reservation of the tree; rejects the New World 'balsam' of Nicolás Monardes; catalogues adulterants and coins the term pseudocarpobalsamum for counterfeit fruit; and charges Venetian physicians and apothecaries with an artis dedecus for removing true balsam from theriac and mithridate. Comprising six chapters of dialogue with a dedicatory epistle to the curators of the University of Padua (Francesco Priuli, Zaccaria Contarini, Leonardo Donà), it appends in two further chapters Pierre Belon's observation on the Matarea balsam in Clusius's Latin version, and closes with an index of chapters. Printed as a quarto at Venice under the shop sign Sub signum Leonis, with woodcut illustrations of the balsam branch; the dedicatory epistle is dated 1590. 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
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Early European Books, Copyright 2011 ProQuest LLC. Images reproduced by courtesy of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze. CFMAGL. 1.7.249