SIBSON, Francis (1814-1876). Medical Anatomy: or, Illustrations of the Relative Position and Movements of the Internal Organs. London: John Churchill & Sons, 1869.
SIBSON, Francis (1814-1876). Medical Anatomy: or, Illustrations of the Relative Position and Movements of the Internal Organs. London: John Churchill & Sons, 1869.

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SIBSON, Francis (1814-1876). Medical Anatomy: or, Illustrations of the Relative Position and Movements of the Internal Organs. London: John Churchill & Sons, 1869.

2o (540 x 370 mm). 21 partially hand-colored lithographed plates by Hullmandel and Lemercier after William Fairland and Léveillé, illustrations in text (some spotting, a few plates with short marginal tears, plate XIV with tear touching image). Later half morocco, gilt-lettered on spine (some wear at joints and extremities). Provenance: Dr. Francis Troup, surgeon (bookplate).

FIRST EDITION. This beautiful atlas depicts the internal organs with fine hand-coloring set within the plain frame of the male and female torso seen from front and back. Sibson was known for his taste for fine art, especially Flaxman, and he clearly wanted his magnum opus to look highly finished. The artist for several of the plates was William Fairland, brother of Thomas Fairland (1804-52) a pupil of Fuseli and Charles Warren, and portraitist to the famous. Sibson believed that anatomy was not being properly taught because the functional aspect of the organs, particularly those of circulation and respiration, was being neglected. In his explanation of plate 1, Sibson writes that he took the outlines of the organs using a transparent tracing frame. From these outlines, William Fairland created colored drawings and the lithographs for plates 1 to 19, which were mostly printed by Hullmandel. Plates 20 and 21 were lithographed by Liveillé i, and printed in Paris by Lemercier. Notably plates 19 through 21 show movements, structure and sounds of the heart. The work includes descriptions of "Sibson's fascia," a fibrous band extending from the apical pleura and attaching to the transverse process of the seventh cervical vertebrae, and Sibson's muscle (scalenus pleuralis). Bedford 855; Garrison-Morton 422; Heirs of Hippocrates 1814; Sappol, Dream Anatomy, p. 127.
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