Oliva Sabuco, Nueva filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre (read in the fourth Madrid impression, 1728)
A treatise on human nature published under the name of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera of Alcaraz, dedicated to Philip II, still being reprinted at Madrid a century and a half later. It argues that sadness makes a juice fall from the brain and dries people up without fever, and asks the king to try its doctrine for one year against two thousand years of Hippocrates and Galen. The impression read is expurgated by order of the Holy Office.
Why this wins its question: Coverage of Sabuco in English is almost entirely a biographical paragraph - the woman who may or may not have written a philosophical book, with the authorship question doing all the work and the book itself unquoted. This object goes the other way and reads the printing. It gives the 1728 Madrid title page in full, including the sentence declaring the impression expurgated under the Inquisition's Index of 1707 - a fact usually omitted from accounts that treat the work as merely neglected; the chivalric opening of the letter to Philip II, where the author states plainly that a kneeling absent woman needs a law of arms to be heard at all; the request that her doctrine be tried for one year against two thousand years of Hippocrates and Galen, argued from named epidemics and from the observation that of a thousand people not three reach a natural death; her demand that the king order those usurping "estas verdades de mi invencion" to desist, lest they raise a laugh like the crow in borrowed feathers; the sonnets of a neighbour of Alcaraz addressed to "la Autora"; and the page where sadness dries the juice of the brain drop by drop and the remedy prescribed is to imagine another hope and put the grievance out of sight. It also states which pages were opened and refuses to date the first edition or adjudicate the authorship dispute from an eighteenth-century reprint, which is the honest limit of the evidence read.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The impression read here states its own pedigree on its title page: "NUEVA FILOSOFIA DE LA NATURALEZA DEL HOMBRE, NO CONOCIDA, NI ALCANZADA DE LOS GRANDES Filosofos antiguos, la qual mejora la vida, y salud humana, con las adicciones de la segunda impression. ESCRITA, Y SACADA A LUZ POR DONA OLIVA SABUCO de Nantes Barrera, natural de la Ciudad de Alcaraz. CON LA DEDICATORIA AL REY DON PHELIPE SEGUNDO de este nombre, y la Carta al Ilustrissimo Senor Don Francisco Zapata, Conde de Barajas, y Presidente de Castilla", printed "En Madrid: En la Imprenta de Domingo Fernandez, en la calle del Duque de Alva. A costa de Francisco Lopez Fernandez", "Ano de 1728". The dedication to Philip II places the composition of the work in that reign; this object does not date the first impression, because no source establishing that date was opened.
The same title page records two things about the book's later life that belong together. It is the "QUARTA IMPRESSION RECONOCIDA, Y ENMENDADA de muchas erratas que tenian las antecedentes, con un Elogio del Doctor Don Martin Martinez a esta obra" - a work of the reign of Philip II still worth a fourth commercial printing in the Madrid of 1728, and worth a laudatory preface from a physician of that generation. And it declares that "ESTA NUEVA IMPRESSION VA EXPURGADA SEGUN el expurgatorio publicado por el Santo Oficio de la Santa, y General Inquisicion el ano de mil setecientos y siete." The text a reader of 1728 held, and the text read for this object, is a censored one.
The dedicatory letter to the king is written throughout in a woman's voice, and it opens by naming the disadvantage it is written from: "Una humilde sierva, y vassalla, hincadas las rodillas en ausencia, pues no puede en presencia, osa hablar: Diome esta osadia, y atrevimiento aquella ley antigua de alta cavalleria, a la qual los grandes senores, y Cavalleros de alta prosapia, de su libre, y espontanea voluntad, se quisieron atar, y obligar, que fue favorecer siempre a las mugeres en sus aventuras." The claim on the reader is made through the chivalric obligation to favour women, which is the argument available to a female author addressing Philip II.
The same letter contains the book's boldest proposal, which is procedural rather than doctrinal. The author asks the king to have "esta mi secta" tried for one year, "pues han probado la medicina de Hipocrates, y Galeno dos mil anos, y en ella han hallado tan poco efecto, y fines tan inciertos, como se ve claro cada dia, y se vido en el gran catarro, tabardete, viruelas, y en pestes passadas, y otras muchas enfermedades, donde no tiene efecto alguno, pues de mil no viven tres, todo el curso de la vida, hasta la muerte natural, y todos los demas mueren muerte violenta de enfermedad, sin aprovechar nada su medicina antigua." A trial of one year against two thousand, argued from the observed failure of the classical corpus in named epidemics, is a recognisably empirical challenge to authority.
The letter also makes a first-person claim of invention and asks the crown to protect it, which is the strongest internal evidence about who the book says wrote it: "Y si alguno, por aver yo dado avisos de algunos puntos de esta materia, en tiempo passado, ha escrito, o escrive, usurpando estas verdades de mi invencion, suplico a V. Catholica Magestad mande las dexe, porque no mueva a risa, como la Corneja vestida de plumas agenas." The attribution of the work has been argued over in modern scholarship; no source on that argument was opened for this object, so nothing is asserted about it here beyond what the sheets show - a first-person female voice, a claim of priority against unnamed borrowers, and the paratext described in the next claim.
The front matter carries contemporary verse addressed to a female author by a neighbour: "SONETOS EN ALABANZA DE LA AUTORA, y de la Obra, compuestos por el Licenciado Don Juan de Sotomayor, vecino de la Ciudad de Alcaraz." The first plays on her name - "Oliva de virtud, y de belleza, Con ingenio, y saber hermoseada, Oliva do la ciencia esta cifrada" - and ends by saying that in her book she shows and signifies "Secretos que los hombres no sabemos." The second sets her against the ancient philosophers who sought self-knowledge and never reached the end of the enigma.
The doctrine itself, on page 19, is a theory of illness caused by emotion, and it is worked out in physiological terms. Sadness makes the juice of the brain fall away little by little, "gota a gota", as an aspergillum still drips after its great flow is past; this does the harm slowly, as envy does, "y de la misma manera los tristes se secan, y consumen sin calentura, porque cessa su vegetacion con esta tristeza, y descontento", which Plato called the discord of soul and body; to such people come consumption and diseases of the skin such as scabies, lice, leprosy and abscesses; and the sad sleep more than the cheerful, because in waking that slow deflux dries the juice of their brain further.
The same page turns the theory into advice a patient can act on, which is what distinguishes the book from a purely speculative natural philosophy. "Para remedio de la tristeza toma estos avisos. Quando la esperanza de tu bien perecio, luego busca, inquiere, y imagina otra. La cosa que siempre te pesa de ella quitala delante de los ojos, o hazla agena." It adds that it helps to know and understand the harms sadness works on human health, in order to defend oneself against it and finally to throw it off. The physiology is wrong and the regimen is a regimen of the mind.
What this object rests on, and what it does not. It rests on one digitised copy of the 1728 Madrid impression, read as page scans: the title page, the opening of the dedicatory letter to the king, a later leaf of the same letter, the sonnets of the front matter, and page 19. That impression is the fourth, it was expurgated under the Index of 1707, and its errata were corrected by an editor, so no wording quoted here can be assumed identical to the author's first printing; the added Elogio of Martin Martinez was not opened. The date of the first edition, the biography of Oliva Sabuco, and the modern dispute over the work's authorship all lie outside what these sheets can establish, and no claim above should be read as settling any of them.