This year the National Library of Malta will be participating in the Book Fair with a selection of books from its collections. The exhibition is divided into two sections – books in French and books about medicine.

The Fair is taking place between the 12th and 16th of November at the Mediterranean Conference Centre, Valletta.

The French section will feature a volume from the prestigious Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers edited by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert and published in France between 1751 and 1772.

The National Library of Malta owns the full set of the Encyclopédie consisting of 28 volumes. The exhibition will also include a 1734 edition of the complete works of the eminent French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin known as Molière (1622-1673) as well as the Traité sur la Tolérance,( s.l., 1764) by François-Marie Arouet who wrote under the nom de plume of Voltaire (1694-1778).

Another work on display is the anonymous work in two volumes entitled Les Illustres Françoises (Utrecht, 1738), actually written by the French colonialist, voyager and writer Robert Challe (1659-1721) who never published under his own name.

Another anonymous work featured in the exhibition is the second edition of De l’Universalité de la Langue Française (Berlin, 1785), actually written by Antoine de Rivarol (1753-1801), a Royalist French writer during the Revolutionary era. On June 3, 1784, Rivarol was awarded the Berlin Academy Prize for this work.

The section on Medicine features some important works by two eminent Maltese physicians – Michel’Angelo Grima and Giuseppe Demarco. Grima was born in Valletta in 1729 and died in 1798. Chief surgeon and Lecturer in Anatomy and Surgery at the Sacra Infermeria in Valletta, Grima had obtained a doctorate in Philosophy and Medicine at the University of Pisa and completed his studies in Paris.

On display in the exhibition is his work Della Medicina Traumatica published in Florence in 1773. Cospicua-born Giuseppe Demarco (1718-1793) was a medical practitioner, scientist, and philosopher. He probably studied at the Jesuits’ Collegium Melitense in Valletta and was subsequently sent to the University of Montpellier in France to pursue a medical degree.

He wrote extensively and the collection of his manuscripts is preserved at the National Library of Malta. The exhibition features his work Tractatus Mechanicus de Non Naturalibus published in Avignon in 1748.

An exhibition on medicine could not but include, if available, works by the ancient Greek physician, philosopher and naturalist Hippocrates of Cos (c. 460-c. 370 BC), considered to be the father of western medicine.

The National Library of Malta is fortunate enough to possess a number of his works. On display in this exhibition are two volumes of his Opera printed in Venice in 1588. The richly illustrated Traité Pratique des Hernies (Paris, 1812) by Antonio Scarpa is also included in this exhibition. Scarpa (1752-1832) was an Italian anatomist and professor at the University of Modena and later at that of Pavia.

The National Library owns the French version of Scarpa’s 1809 treatise Sull’ernie memorie anatomico-chirurgiche. The exhibition ends with the Italian edition of Léon Louis Rostan’s Cours de médecine clinique ou sont exposés les principes de la médecine organique published in Paris in 1830. Rostan (1790-1866), a French doctor and a member of the Académie Nationale de Médicine, had studied medicine in Marseilles and Paris.

The Italian edition on display, entitled Corso di medicina clinica in cui sono esposti i principi della medicina organica, was translated by Dr Giusepe Sorda and published in two volumes in Florence in 1846.

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