Medical History, Mary Shelley, & Frankenstein

"To examine the causes of life, we must first have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of anatomy, but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural decay and corruption of the human body."

This large folio contains not only 105 beautiful anatomical copperplates, but also a fine engraved portrait of the author. These plates are considered among the finest illustrations of the Baroque period, and the impressions in this copy are clean and bright, on heavy, well-preserved paper. Its author, Govard Bidloo, was a Dutch professor of anatomy at The Hague.

Sir Charles Bell was educated at the University of Edinburgh and spent the major part of his professional career in London before returning to his alma mater as professor of surgery. Among his many contributions to medical science is his role in establishing the motor and sensory pathways of the spinal nerves. The twelve aquatint plates (eleven of them hand- colored) were engraved by Thomas Medland after Bell's own drawings and constitute what is one of the most beautifully illustrated books on neuroanatomy in the entire literature.

The 726 hand-colored lithographs in this 8-volume set were executed after drawings by Nicolas Henri Jacob, who made his drawings from dissections and other anatomical preparations. Bourgery studied medicine at Paris where he won gold medals for excellence from the Paris faculty of medicine and hospital administration. Four volumes of the set are devoted to surgical anatomy and cover in detail nearly all the major operations that were performed during the first half of the nineteenth century.

©2018 John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences, 600 Newton Road, Iowa City, IA 52242-1098. Image: Illustration by Barry Moser from Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelly (Pennyroyal Press, 1983).