Piso's study of the natural history of Brazil was also a pioneer work on tropical medicine, and also the largest work from the standpoint of format published by the Elzeviers. The folio includes De medicina brasiliensi by Piso and Historia rerum naturalium brasiliae by the German naturalist and astronomer Georg Marggraf.

Piso was the first to separate yaws from syphilis. The second edition, entitled De lndiae utriusque re naturali et medica libri xiv (Amsterdam, 1658), included additional material by Piso and by de Bondt (see No. 2263). It also included a different version of the frontispiece. See also Nos. 1825. Digital facsimile of a copy of the 1648 edition with a hand-colored frontispiece from the Internet Archive at this link. Digital facsimile of the 1658 edition from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

This is an extensively revised and enlarged second edition of Piso’s Historia naturalis Brasiliae (1648). In this edition Piso reprinted Bontius's De medicina Indorum (1642) with two additional books on Asian flora and fauna. Piso introduced ipecacuanha into Europe. Reproduced in part, with translation, in Opuscula Selecta Neerlandicorum de Arte Medica, 1937, No. 14. See Nos. 2263.1 & 5303. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.