Short treatise on medicine by Abraham Zacuto
Tratado/ sobre Medecina que/ fez o Doutor Zacuto/ para seu filho levar consigo/ quando se foy para o Brazil./ Disposto e Copeado/ por hordem de/ Ishack de Matatia Aboab./ Anno 5450/ Escrito por B. Godines.
Short treatise on medicine by Abraham Zacuto for his son to take with him to Brazil, and some other treatises, copied for Isaac Matatiah Aboab by Benjamin Senior Godines. Amsterdam, 1690.
Instructions for treating diseases and pains. The author, a scion of a well-known Marrano family, was a distinguished physician on the Iberian peninsula. He settled in Amsterdam in 1625 and openly returned to Judaism. He died in 1642, leaving a legacy of numerous medical works.
Contents:
p. [1]: Title page.
p. 1-79: Text. Second title: “Compendio breve em o qual se conte[m]/ a Cura de todas as doemsas, q[ue] aCom/tesem no Corpo humano, com q[eu] te/ Saberas governar em tempo que não/ aja Medico” (Brief compendium on healing every disease of the human body that you may know to cure yourself when there is no physician).
p. 80-83: Index.
p. 85-89: Some prescriptions signed by Isaac de Matatia Aboab
p. 91-101: Ethical precepts of Isaac de Matatiah Aboab for his son David Aboab Curiel.
Abraham Zacuto (alias Zacuto Lusitano) wrote this treatise about 1638 and addressed it to his son Jacob Zacuto, a merchant in Recife (Brazil). See Francisco Moreno de Carvalho, “Zacuto Lusitano e um tratado de medicina dirigido ao Brasil”, Em nome da fé: estudos in memoriam de Elias Lipiner. Ed. Nachman Falbel et al, São Paulo, Editora Perspectiva, 1999. Mendes dos Remédios, Os Judeus portugueses em Amsterdam, Coimbra, 1911, pp. 139-140. I. S. Révah, “Pour l´histoire des nouveaux-chrétiens portugais. La relation généalogique d’I. de M. Aboab”, Boletim Internacional de Bibliografia Luso-Brasileira, vol. II, n. 2, April-June 1961, p. 283.
Aboab’s ethical precepts also repose in the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana (cf. Cat. Ros. nr. 254) and in this collection in EH 48 E 32 (a printed version) and EH 48 D 9.
Text in Portuguese with some Latin annotations / Paper / 15,3 x 9,7 cm. / 116 pp. (partly paginated, last 11 ll. blank) / Skilled italic writing / Title written in drawn decorative frame.
Fuks 337. Kaplan 173. Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.