Natural Magick

Facsimile by Basic Books for their Collectors Series in Science of the 1658 English translation of the 1589 edition of Magiae naturalis libri XX in quibus scientiarum naturalium ...demonstrantur, by Giambattista della Porta c1535-1615 , a sixteenth-century Neapolitan scientist and writer. Magiae naturalis was a kind of popular science compendium, a survey of "scientific" knowledge for the general reader, with a strongly practical emphasis. Much of the advice is practical: how to dye your hair, how to preserve food, and so on. This book should be of interest to students of the history of science, of popular publishing in the late Renaissance, or of the sociology of everyday life in the late 15 to early 16th centuries. Some soiling of slipcase. ix, i , 409, 9 pages. quarter cloth, paper-covered boards, slipcase.. small 4to..