CHESELDEN, William. The Anatomy of the Human Body
London, Printed by W. Bowyer, 1730.
£ 1,650
8vo. 4 books in 1 volume; ff. 8 (half title, title, dedicatory letter, Preface and Contents), pp. 255 (=355), with 34 engraved plates. It includes the final Syllabus (an anatomical index with several diagrams) and the Appendix, with 3 additional plates. Head and tail pieces, and floriated initials. Early nineteenth-century bookplate of the Tinclars Library, Brampton Vicarage, Westmoreland. “Ex-libris Brent Gration-Maxfield” written on pastedown. Contemporary calf over boards, gilt double-fillet frame on covers and pairs of horizontal gilt double-fillets for each of the six compartments of the spine, low-raised bands. Fore-edges sprinkled in red. A fine copy, notwithstanding a few minor marginal wormholes to the inner margins of a few leaves in the middle of the book. Fresh, clean and crips internally.
Fourth edition of this popular and splendidly illustrated work (first published in 1713) on the anatomy of the human body by the physician William Chelseden F. R. S. (1688-1752), who was in the service of queen Caroline of Ansbach, wife to King George II, and surgeon to St. Thomas’s Hospital. He was influential in establishing surgery as a scientific medical profession. Via the medical missionary Benjamin Hobson his work also helped revolutionise medical practices in China and Japan in the 19th century. Furthermore, Cheselden is credited with performing the first known case of full recovery from blindness in 1728, of a blind 13-year-old boy. He described this event at the end of the Appendix to the present work.
ESTC T121169