Alexander Knipps-Macoppe - De Aortae polypo epistola medica - 1731

(Medicine; Illustrated; Rariora) ALEXANDER KNIPPS-MACOPPE (1662-1744)
De Aortae polypo epistola medica. Edita ab illustrissimo viro Alexandro Knips-Macoppe Brixiae, Sumptibus Caroli Gromi, 1731
§ Small 4to (197x126 mm.), [8], 88 pp. (signature: []4, A-F8, F4), 1 large engraved folding plate. Contemporary boards, handwritten title on spine. Marginal stain at the last pages. Very fine, uncut copy.
First published in Lyon (but Padua) in 1693. Born in Padua from German parents, Knips Macoppe graduated in the same town in philosophy and medicine in 1681. He moved to Venice and was appointed personal physician of Alessandro Farnese, who he followed first in military campaings and then to Madrid. After Farnese death Knips Macoppe travelled in Flanders and France, finally coming back to Padua in 1693. He was the first to diagnose as “polipo dell'aorta” the illness affecting Charles Patin (a professor of practical medicine 1633-1693) from which Patin eventually died. The letter that Knips Macoppe had written to Patin was published under the title De aortae polypo epistola medica ..., Lugduni, Cadorini, 1693, but it was actually printed in Padua by Cadorin; the fictional place “Lugduni” made some author believe that Knips Macoppe studied in Leyden (making a double mistake, as Lugduni was Lyon and not Leiden) and that the Epistola was his doctoral thesis. (Ongaro). “The following year, the treatise De aortae polypo was included in the Appendix ad annum primum decuriae III. Ephemeridum medico-physicarum naturae curiosorum in Germany (Nuremberg 1694, pp. 85-123), where he had been sent by Patin's daughter, Carla Caterina; from here it was taken up by J.J. Manget - Bibliotheca scriptorum medicorum, veterum et recentorum, II, 1, Genevae 1731, pp. 452-465 - and in the same year it was reprinted (Brixiae 1731); finally it was republished in the Classical Dictionary of Internal and External Medicine (XXXV, Venice 1837, pp. 279-306).” (Ongaro - translated). The heart polyps, actually blood clots, were often misunderstood because of the explanation given according to the humoral doctrine: “The so-called "heart polyps" were actually blood clots, fatty or bloody, found in the heart cavities and in the large vessels of the corpse, to which the onset of severe asthmatic-anginal syndromes was attributed: these “polyps” were generally interpreted according to the traditional humoral doctrine as deposits of “materia peccans”, interpretation that to such an extent subjugated the observer, that evident lesions rich in pathological significance, such as the arterial aneurysms that could contain them, were overshadowed.” (Ongaro - translated).
 Giuseppe Ongaro Knips Macoppe, Alessandro in: Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani De Renzi, V, p. 325