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Aristotle's Masterpiece, also known as The Works of Aristotle, the Famous Philosopher, is a sex manual and a midwifery book that was popular in England from the early modern period through to the 19th century. It was first published in 1684 and written by an unknown author who falsely claimed to be Aristotle. As a consequence the author is now described as a Pseudo-Aristotle, the collective name for unidentified authors who masqueraded as Aristotle. It is claimed that the book was banned in Britain until the 1960s, [2] although there was no provision in the UK for banning books as such. However reputable publishers and booksellers might have been cautious about vending Aristotle's Masterpiece, at least in the wake of the 1857 Obscene Publications Act. After Nicholas Culpeper's Directory for Midwives had been published in 1651, other writers and booksellers sought to emulate its great success. Aristotle's Masterpiece was among the two dozen works in the genre which were published in the following decades. This was in sharp contrast to the three titles which had been published on the subject in the previous century. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the work was published in three different versions in 9, 20 and 78 editions respectively. It was probably the most widely reprinted book on a medical subject in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The first version borrowed most of its content from two earlier works, the Secret Miracles of Nature by Levinus Lemnius and the anonymous Complete Midwives Practice Enlarged. The latter had been a successful work by itself, coming second only to Culpeper's Directory for Midwives in number of seventeenth century editions. A second version was released by publisher Benjamin Harris in 1697. The first half contained most of the first version and the second half was borrowed from John Sadler's A Sick Women's Private Looking-Glas, which was published in 1636. The third version was published around 1710 was more different from the previous versions, but again copied material from other works on the subject.

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9781774416884

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William Salmon (1644-1713) was an English empiric doctor and a writer of medical texts. He advertised himself as a Professor of Physick. Salmon held an equivocal place in the medical community. He led apothecaries in opposing attempts by physicians to control the dispensing of medicines, [1] and was derided by physicians as the King of the Quacks.[2]:118 He has been described as a brilliant publicist, but not much of a philosopher.[1] Salmon copied, translated, abridged, enlarged and compiled from the texts of others to create popular books emphasizing practice over theory, and often marketing his own medications.[2] A prolific author on a broad range of medical topics, Salmon's works were widely read in his time.[3] His books were owned by respected men including Isaac Newton, Daniel Defoe, William Congreve and Samuel Johnson.

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