Portaleone, Abraham ben David. De Auro Dialogi Tres [“Three Dialogues on the Application of Gold in Medicine.”]

(MEDICINE)

Johannes Baptistam daPorta

Venice

1584

FIRST EDITION. Printer’s device on title. Headpieces. Historiated initials. On p. 12, magnificent full-page woodcut featuring the coat-of-arms of the author.

Fürst, III, p. 115; H. Friedenwald, Jewish Luminaries in Medical History, Vol. I (1946) p. 126

Important Medical Treatise by the Italian Jewish Physician, Author of “Shiltei HaGiborim.” Abraham Portaleone (1542-1612), began his career as a Talmudic scholar under Rabbis Jacob Fano, and Judah and Abraham Provenzali. Later, he studied medicine at the University of Pavia, qualifying there in 1563 and was subsequently granted a license to treat Christians by the Dukes of Mantua, Guglielmo and Vincenzo I. This distinction, rare for a Jewish physician, was confirmed by Pope Gregory XIV. It was at the command of said Duke Guglielmo that Portaleone wrote this extensive and intriguing study on the use of gold in medicine, in which the author disproves the commonly held belief that the ingestion of gold can prolong life. See Alessandro Guetta, Avraham Portaleone: From Science to Mysticism in: Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, II (1999) pp. 41-47; Samuel S. Kottek, “Jews between Profane and Sacred Science in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Abraham Portaleone in: Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (2001) pp. 108-118; S. Simonsohn, History of the Jews of the Duchy of Mantua (1977) p. 584, 637-8, 645-6.