Abstract

This article is an examination of the Augsburg physician Ieremias Martius’s Catalogus bibliothecae of 1572, which may well by the first printed sales catalogue of a library. The author claims it to be the product of careful selection, covering the whole field of medicine and containing both rare and recent medical books. The catalogue is placed here in the context of Martius’s career, and his contacts in the European medical world. An account is given of the bibliographical resources available to him, before the contents themselves are anatomised. His interest in various fields is revealed here: medieval practical medicine, medical humanism, anatomy, Hippocratism, medical observationes and letter collections, gynecology, astrological medicine, balneology, botany, and the literature of medical secrets. Martius’s eclecticism and open-mindedness is revealed further through a comparison of his library with five other contemporary book collections of doctors.