A spread from a rare complete copy of the 1593, first printed edition of Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’ – sold by Bloomsbury Auctions for £17,000.
Billed as the first printed edition of the most authoritative medical text in the Islamic world, a 1593 copy of a work known in the English-speaking world as Avicenna’s ‘Canon of Medicine’ was part of a recent London sale.
Bloomsbury Auctions (25% buyer’s premium), who sold it for £17,000 as part of an April 30 sale of Islamic and other Western works of art on paper, says that only three other copies are recorded at auction – all of which were incomplete.