Third Edition: 248 pages, translated into English from the German by John Campbell, rebound in modern half calf with some of old spine label laid down, very light age-toning, several instances of annotation, finger soiling, very good.
Combination of medical speculation, classical learning, and accounts of unusually long-lived people, particularly the ancient Roman Hermippus of Smyrna, whom Cohausen associated with remarkable longevity, hence the work's original Latin title, Hermippus Redivivus, which originally appeared in 1742. The obsession with long life has itself the longest of lives; this work occupies a key position between traditional alchemical and medical ideas about extending life and the emerging Enlightenment interest in empirical observation and natural science. Developments in the latter also fueled the period's growing conviction that aging and mortality could be investigated scientifically rather than regarded simply as fixed conditions of human existence. This English translation quickly broadened the audience from learned occultists to a more general 18th-century readership hungry for both scientific observation and ancient authority, as well as attempts to reconcile the two.
Weight: 441g
- Binding Condition: New (rebound)
- Overall Condition: Very Good
- Size: 8o (205 x 130 mm)
