Luís Gomes Ferreira. Erario mineral, utilissimo, naõ so' para os professores de Cirurgia, que residem na America Portugueza ... mas universalmente para todos. Tom. II. Lisbon: Manoel da Silva, 1755. [Mineral Treasure, highly useful not only for professors of surgery who reside in Portuguese America. . . but universally for everyone.]
This is volume two of the book’s second edition. The Lilly Library also owns volume one as well as the single-volume first edition that appeared in 1735. Charles R. Boxer wrote of the second edition: “This book about Brazilian medicine during the colonial period is extremely rare.” Published in Lisbon, the 1755 edition was revised and enlarged; with the exception of this one and perhaps one or two others, all second editions were destroyed shortly after printing by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. The work is a compilation of medical practices described by the barber-surgeon Ferreira based on his twenty-year residence and practice of medicine in Minas Gerais. Apart from its value as a source for the history of tropical medicine and, more particularly, the state of surgery and medicine in eighteenth-century Brazil, the book is a fascinating source for the social history of Minas Gerais. The pages displayed describe the author’s own throat sores.
