Only known copy of the Jean Ruel issue of the very rare second(?) Paris edition of one of the most important early pharmacological books, with about 250 medicinal recipes arranged alphabetically, written by Thibault Lespleigney (1496-1550), apothecary and professor of medicine and pharmacology at Tours, where he first published it as Dispensarium medicinarum in 1538. It inevitably owes something to the ca. 1100 Antidotarium Nicolai, first printed in 1471 and almost the only comprehensive book on the subject when Lespleigney wrote, but it also foreshadows the pharmacopoeias.
The term pharmacopoeia was coined only in 1561, but is now used to refer to a collection of recipes officially authorized by a government or medical or pharmaceutical association, the first being Valerius Cordus, Dispensatorium (Nürnberg, written in 1542 but published posthumously in 1546). Before that books of recipes by leading pharmacologists served a similar role without any official authorization. Lespleigney's was the most important in France and enormously influential. François Chappuys revised, corrected and expanded Lespleigney's text for the second edition (Lyon, 1539), giving it the present title, and nearly all later editions, including the present, follow his revised text.
The fore-edge fold of H5/6 was carelessly opened, so that the upper outside corner of H5 is attached to H6 instead of H5, a couple pages show minor smudges and there is an occasional small marginal stain or tear, but the book is otherwise in very good condition and almost untrimmed. The boards are slightly bowed but the binding is also in very good condition. Cf. BMC STC French, p. 263; Durling 2801-2803; Moreau 1536-1540, no. 1863; Schelenz, Geschichte der Pharmazie, pp. 437-438; USTC 147783; Dorveaux, Notice sur les vie et les oeuvres de Thibault Lespleigney (1898), pp. 46-48; not in Heirs of Hippocrates; Honeyman; Norman Lib.; Wellcome.