Giovanni Vivenzio

History and theory of earthquakes in general and in particular of those of Calabria, and of Messina of MDCCLXXXIII...

Giovanni Vivenzio

Naples, Stamperia Regale, 1783
23 cm; 384+56 pp.; period paperback.

Splendid rare original edition of one of the most interesting writings by Vivenzio, a well-known Neapolitan scholar, an encyclopedic scientist, with specializations in medicine and surgery, obstetrics, anatomy, and experimental physics. General Protomedico of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a work dedicated to the Sacred Royal Majesty Maria Carolina of Austria, Queen of the Sicilies. The treatment and the considerable amount of information contained are impressive, with an excursus through the ages, the history of the main earthquakes that marked the populations of various parts of the world. The work, however, is purely focused on the cataclysm that affected the southern provinces of Italy at the end of the 18th century, in particular that of 1783, with the involvement of the towns of Calabria and part of Sicily, the province of Messina, the one closest to the Italian mainland.

This volume is a realistic and immediate chronicle of that event, and in fact it will be printed almost simultaneously, in the same year. It is impossible to mention the innumerable names of people and places mentioned in the course of the work, many also reported in the dense and learned notes, a large final appendix will classify - through synoptic tables very rich in data - all the damage caused, town by town.

A famous historical and scientific work, in splendid fresh condition, whose immaculate pages have probably never been turned, never trimmed, the margins intact and uncut. Precious illustrative apparatus, with four plates outside the text, engraved in copper by etching and folded, one of which is large and repeatedly folded, which when open depicts the cartography of the time of Calabria and part of Sicily.