Basilae, Ioan Oporin, 1564. 8vo (16.5 x 10.8 cm). 565, [lxviii] pp. Contemporary limp vellum. Two leather straps (perished).

Rare, second edition (first 1562). Johannes Wier (also Weijer, Weyer, Wierus, or Piscinarius) (ca. 1515-1588), was a Dutch medical doctor who was one of the first to protest against the persecution of witches. He is considered "the founder of medical psychiatry" (Garrison-Morton), and a human rights defender avant la lettre. He published on rare diseases and sexual abuse. Wier influenced contemporaries such as Michel de Montaigne and later thinkers such as Victor Hugo, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. His motto was "Vince te ipse" (Conquer yourself). He was one of "the most outstanding doctors of his time. His greatest merit lies in the clarity and courage in which he systematically first undertook the fight against the witch trials" (ADB). "His major achievement was ' De praestigiis daemonum'. Strongly objecting to superstition and the random criteria of the witch hunters of the time, it is a work against the witchcraft trials and their gruesome outcome, which was haunting Germany and which Weier fought with all the weapons of Science" (Robbins; see also Thorndike). Last ten index pages with a single, small worm hole, with loss of a few letters but hardly obtrusive. Old hand notes on the flyleaf and title, few old underlinings. In all a very good, clean and crisp copy. Only three auction records in the last 50 years. ADB XLII, p. 266; Garrison-Morton 4916; Robbins (1972), Encyclopedia of Witchcraft; Thorndike, L. (1941). A History of Magic and Experimental Science, pp. 515-516.