Les secrets du seigneur Alexis Piemontois Revue, & augmente d'une infinite de rares secrets,

650, [lxxxi]pp., woodcut illustrations throughout, contemporary mottled calf, joints cracked, spine gilt though bottom section missing, 8vo, Rouen, Martin de la Motte, 1642.

EXTREMELY RARE. First published in 1555, this “book of secrets’’ was phenomenally popular, going through 266 editions and was translated into six languages. It contains a wide range of recipes and instructions, including formulae for making medicine, cosmetics, ink, dyes, metals, perfume, pigments, paper, and much more. The author’s empirical approach to science as a hunt for the secrets of nature was an important innovation in the writing of natural philosophy. The work pervaded experimental science during the period of the Scientific Revolution. According to Thorndike, “publication of the literature of secrets, medicinal and otherwise, received a great impulse from the appearance… of the Secrets of Alessio of Piedmont.” Ferguson Bibliotheca Chemica I, pp.22-23

Although this text is by no means anonymous, this is the only known work by “Alexis of Piedmont”, and it is now generally accepted that Girolamo Ruscelli (1500-1566), an important humanist, wrote the secrets under this pseudonym. Ruscelli reported that the Secreti contained the experimental results of an ‘Academy of Secrets’ and a group of humanists and noblemen founded in Naples in the 1540s. Ruscelli’s academy is the first recorded example of an experimental scientific society.

[Thorndike VI. 215-216, Ferguson Books of Secrets III, Pollard and Potter 104]