A Series of Anatomical Plates, in Lithography, with References and Physiological Comments, Illustrating the Structure of the Different Parts of the Human Body

Description:

This work is made up of five Divisions: The Muscles of the Human Body, 1836; The Vessels of the Human Body, 1846; The Nerves of the Human Body, 1839; The Viscera of the Human Body, 1840; The Bones and Ligaments of the Human Body, 1842. All are first editions, except Vessels which is a slightly later reprint (first published 1837).

Originally issued in 104 fascicles between 1836 and 1842 with large lithographic plates, available plain or hand-coloured, and arranged in five divisions. A feature of the work is its ambitious illustration programme. Plates were drawn by J. Walsh and William Bagg (1804-1869), a portrait painter and scientific illustrator, transferred to stone by William Fairland (b. 1806), and printed by some of the foremost London lithographers of the period: Charles Joseph Hullmandel (1789-1850), Graf & Soret, and Fairland. The completed set formed two folio volumes totalling 1,361 pages, available in 1842 at £12 plain, or £20 coloured. As many medical students could not afford the subscription for all the fascicles or to purchase the full set, and plates were used for teaching purposes, complete copies, especially with plates coloured, are rare.

Welcome IV p. 452.

Jones Quain, (1796-1865) was a leading anatomist and Professor of General Anatomy at University College, London. He collaborated with the surgeon William James Erasmus Wilson (1809-1884), then lecturer on anatomy and physiology at the Middlesex Hospital, to produce one of the great 19th-century anatomical atlases. Quain and Wilson's A Series of Anatomical Plates combined striking lithographic illustrations with explanatory 'physiological comments'.

Condition

2 vols, royal folio (510x325mm), half leather, worn, stained and defective, boards detatched, lacking spines. Frontis heavily stained and torn. Some soiling and spotting throughout, text and plates stained in places, sometimes heavily (approx. 10 plates). A few plates torn mostly without significant loss; some plates (approx. 8) in Muscles more extensively torn, a couple torn right across the plate, several with some loss. One plate is a replacement loosely inserted (margins frayed), from another copy [Viscera, plate 30]; one plate lacking [Muscles, plate 29]. Although this set has obviously been heavily used, and sustained some damage, many of the plates are still largely clean and most are finely hand-coloured (the 26 uncoloured plates were probably never issued coloured).