Engravings, explaining the anatomy of the bones, muscles and joints. Lacks printed title as often.
Publisher Information: Edinburgh: 1794.
Engravings, explaining the anatomy of the bones, muscles, and joints. 4to. [4], xxii, [2], 191, [1]pp. Lacking printed title as often. With additional pages 38* and 109*. Engraved title and 32 plates (4 outline) drawn & mostly engraved or etched by Bell; text engravings. Edinburgh: John Paterson for Bell & Bradfute. . . , 1794. 262 x 206 mm. Half mottled sheep, marbled boards ca. 1794, light rubbing, spine faded. Some dampstaining and foxing, library stamp on engraved title, front endpaper and flyleaf, but a good to very good copy. Bookplate.
First Edition, earlier state, with p. 109*. “Magnificently realistic” (Russell 60) and “one of the milestones in the history of anatomic delineation” (Garrison, History of Medicine, p. 478). John Bell’s atlas of the bones, muscles and joints was issued as a separate work (so stated by Bell, see Russell 59) a year after his text The Anatomy of the Bones, Muscles, and Joints. Bell’s illustrations are some of the most striking in the entire literature. “Certainly they have the immediacy of drawings made in the dissecting rooms of late Georgian Edinburgh. Some are quite gruesome and even perverted . . . In their context, however, they are admirable, for they were intended to be used to supplement the teacher’s demonstrations, to remind the student of what he had seen, and to be a guide when the student sat down with the prosected material. It was under the Bells . . . that the extramural schools brought the aspiring surgeon much closer to the cadaver, allowing the student opportunities for actual dissection” (Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Body (1992) 491, also plate 104).
Book Id: 42567Price: $1,750.00