Rare first and only early edition, with the text in Spanish but the lists of ingredients in Latin, of by far the most extensive and most detailed early medicinal recipe book in Spanish, with recipes for about 300 medicines arranged in 9 sections for internal medicines followed by 3 sections for external medicines. Each recipe begins with a list of ingredients followed by instructions for the preparation of the medicine and information about its uses and dosage under various circumstances. Liber 1, section V is devoted to opium. The book closes with an appendix on weights and measures and an extensive index. Its only real predecessor, Luis de Oviedo's 1581 Methodo de la coleccion, y reposicion de las medicinas, offers only 49 recipes and gives no clear lists of ingredients.
With an owner's inscription of the Madrid pharmacologist José Saranderes, author of a 1837 manuscript on the preparation of opium, on the back of the title-page and his initials J.S. gold-tooled at the foot of the spine. Slightly browned with some foxing, spots and stains, a hole affecting a couple words in Y2 and restored corners in 7 other leaves without loss of text, but still generally in good condition. Binding slightly rubbed but otherwise good. Bibliographia medica Hispanica, vol. 2, 140 (p. 63); R.R, Guerrero, Diccinario... autores farmacéuticos, vol. 1 (1958), pp. 632-633; A. Hernández Morejón, Historia bibliográfica de la medicina Española, vol. 5 (1846), p. 50; Krivatsy 2260 (lacking title-page & 1 text leaf); Palau 47896 & 48131; USTC 5021897; Wellcome I, 1355.