Details
BIGELOW, Jacob (1787-1879). American Medical Botany. Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, [1817]-1821. 5 parts only (of 6, lacking vol. one, part I), 4° (268 x 183 mm). With half-titles, 50 coloured etchings (of 60), some finished by hand. (Occasional spotting). Original green paper boards, printed with section titles, uncut, in modern cloth box (rebacked, some scuffing, corners lightly bumped). Provenance: Boston Public Library (blindstamp in vol. I with deaccession blindstamp) -- J.M. Butchelder (pencil signature in vols II and III).
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES WITH PLATES PRINTED IN COLOUR. Bigelow, professor of materia medica at Harvard, was one of America's greatest botanists. This work was to have been illustrated with hand-coloured copperplates, but as the first illustrations for Volume I, Part I, were prepared, this method proved too slow and expensive. Bigelow turned to an alternative method of stone etching, which although predating Senefelder's invention of lithography, provided the solution. RARE IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. Bennett, p.11; Nissen BBI 164; Norman 234; Sabin 5294; Stafleu & Cowan 514; Richard Wolfe Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany (Boston MA, 1979), ch.3-4.
FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST BOOK PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES WITH PLATES PRINTED IN COLOUR. Bigelow, professor of materia medica at Harvard, was one of America's greatest botanists. This work was to have been illustrated with hand-coloured copperplates, but as the first illustrations for Volume I, Part I, were prepared, this method proved too slow and expensive. Bigelow turned to an alternative method of stone etching, which although predating Senefelder's invention of lithography, provided the solution. RARE IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. Bennett, p.11; Nissen BBI 164; Norman 234; Sabin 5294; Stafleu & Cowan 514; Richard Wolfe Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany (Boston MA, 1979), ch.3-4.
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