PAULLINI, Christian Franz (1643–1711)

Best edition – Fourth enlarged and revised edition with the addition of a second volume, now totalling no less than over 750 pages compared to the first edition of 1696 of 304 pages. Paullini’s Heilsame Dreck-Apotheke, a work more notorious than famous, is described by Faber du Faur in his German Baroque Literature as “one of the filthiest books in world literature”, the purpose of which, according to the title page, was to cure successfully almost all ailments, even the most serious diseases and curses, from head to toe, internally and externally, with excrements and urine. The book is not exclusively devoted to faeces but to all kinds of secretions such as urine, menstruation blood, ear-wax, sweat, mucus, etc. Paullini describes with hundreds of examples from medical literature and also from his own practice, the outstanding virtues of man’s stools and urine, both inwardly given, and outwardly applied - but also excrements from domestic and wild animals, e.g. squirrels, elephants, camels, wolves, bears, cuckoos, peacocks, owls, crocodiles, lizards, spiders and bees. The book is full of nasty prescriptions and relates hundreds of curious cases. Paullini was born in Eisenach and studied at various German universities and also in Copenhagen, where he even acted as interpreter for the Italian adventurer and conspirator Giuseppo Francesco Borri. On his return from a visit to England he graduated as M.D. in Leiden. He travelled extensively, visited Sweden and Norway, and is said to have visited Lapland and Iceland as well. He then practised in Hamburg up to 1675, which year he spent in France, after having been created Count Palatine. On his return to Germany he was engaged by the Bishop of Münster as premier physician and historiographer, but in 1689 he removed to Eisenach where he died in 1712, having been paralysed on his right side for seven years. Paullini possessed a thoroughly facile pen and is the author of Zeit-kürzende Lust, a sort of encyclopedia of curiosities and anomalies, which was exceedingly popular, as was his numerous monographs on the dog, the wolf, the mole, the eel, the hare, the ass, and on different herbs, written accordingly to the norm of the illustrious Academia Naturae Curiosorum, of which he was a member.

Collation: Pp (44) including engraved frontispiece, 436, title in black and red; [Anderer Theil]: pp (4) including separate title-leaf, 274, final leaf blank .

Binding: Contemporary calf, blind decorated spine with yellow title-label.

Provenance: Christopher Carlander (1759–1848), whose signature is found inside front board, and with his mark [ :/: ] on the title-page.

References: Ferguson, II, p 76; Farber du Faur, German Baroque Literature, pp 205-06; Hagelin, Materia Medica, pp 160-161. Waller 7239-7241 (Editions from 1847, 1697, 1699).