The latter’s work was a popular Muslim pharmacopoeia that has been described as “for centuries the standard text-book on pharmacy in the West”.
Including at the end an extra tract on the medicinal use and preparation of barley water, a somewhat foxed, browned and occasionally annotated copy of the Bologna edition in old stiff wrappers was sold by Swann (25/20/12% buyer’s premium) on March 9 for a record $12,000 (£9870).
The previous best – indeed the only other copy to show up in auction records – was £2800 for half-vellum bound copy of the same edition offered at Bonhams in 2012.
