Filippo Baldini (fl. 1770 - 1797)

De odorum mechanismo in corpore humano dissertationes IV. a Philippo Baldini concinnatae. Et excellentissimo domino D. Antonino Maresca duci Serrae Capreole &c. dicatae. Neapoli, ex typographia Raymundiana, 1770


§ 8vo, [8], 73, [7] pp.; sign.: a4, A-E8., slightly later coloured paperboards, a fine and crisp copy,
First, utterly rare edition (only five copies known to be preserved in public collections) of the earliest monographic work dedicated to the anatomy and physiology of olfaction, as well as the first work published by the Neapolitan doctor Filippo Baldini, one of the leading scholars of dietetics, hygiene and public health of the late 18th century.

Exquisitely academic in their structure, the four dissertations that make up the work - allegedly constituting a reworking of Baldini’s graduation thesis -, after a brief historical excursus of the hypotheses concerning olfactory faculties, from the Epicurean theory of effluvia to speculations typical of Cartesian mechanicism, they focus on an accurate anatomical analysis of human olfaction, to which are added curious and innovative intuitions about the connection between mind and odours, not without avant-garde speculations about the existence of an olfactory memory.
The treatise knew wide success, as evidenced by the existence of a second, slightly reworked edition (Neapoli [s.d.], 1778), reprinted in the fifth volume of Baldini’s opera omnia (Saggi intorno alla preservazione, e cura dell’umana salute. Napoli, presso Giuseppe Maria Porcelli, 1787). Ref Blake (p. 29, II ed.), OCLC 33972956.