Manuscript compendium on physics and engineering.

Large 4to (ca. 200 x 260 mm). Italian manuscript on paper, 570 written pages, with a few additional blanks, illustrated throughout with more than 200 pen and ink drawings of scientific equipment, machine models, experiments, etc., including a full-page coloured plate showing a balloon and two plates removed from Meyers Conversations-Lexikon. Contemporary half calf over marbled boards (rubbed; spine defective). An encompassing 19th century manual on physics and mechanics, likely a lecture manuscript, profusely illustrated and twice signed "Visconti Achille" on the flyleaf and at the head of the first page of text. Whether or not the writer is to be identified with the like-named physician (rather than physicist) who, serving as prosector at Milan's Ospedale Maggiore, in 1870 first discovered the lung condition silicosis, must remain a matter of further research. The apparent date of composition would be consistent with a possible earlier pursuit of a university training in physics; the inclusion of an 1897 Milanese newspaper clipping, mounted to the pastedown and commemorating the passing of the great physicist Galileo Ferraris, would point both toward the medical man's known area of activity and away from a specialized anatomist with a by-then substantial list of anatomical and pathological publications to his name. The hefty, closely written volume here covers subjects ranging from barometers to the refraction of light, fully illustrated with neat sketches and a particularly charming full-page pen and wash drawing of a hot air balloon. - Binding rubbed; interior sound.