Des causes, des maladies , & le moyen de s'en préserver...
A 1630 French medical treatise by François Semichon, printed in Paris by Denis Langlois for a general readership seeking to understand disease and its prevention. The single woodcut shows a pelican-like bird piercing its breast above a nest of entwined roots and a pair of hands, a classic emblem of self-sacrifice and nourishment; a designer could take from it the dense, hatched linework and the symmetrical, arched vignette format suited to small emblematic headpieces.
