John Sheldon - The History of the Absorbent System, Part the First [all published]. - 1784

The History of the Absorbent System, Part the First [all published]. Containing the Chylography, or Description of the Human Lacteal Vessels, with the Different Methods of Discovering, Injecting, and Preparing Them, and the Instruments Used for These Purposes. LARGE-PAPER COPY. INSCRIBED BY SHELDON.

1st Edition. 6 leaves, vi, 52 pp, 1 leaf [errata]; 6 plates, each with explanatory text leaf.

Folio. A large, untrimmed copy. Very Good. First Edition. INSCRIBED BY JOHN SHELDON to Henry Sully, Esq.

A lovely association copy, from the library, and with the ex-libris of the anatomist and medical bibliographer, Professor Anatomica KF Russell. In his book, Russell says that "The plates are magnificent" (Russell, British Anatomy 748). "William Hunter and his pupils, Hewson, Sheldon, and Cruikshank . . . were busily engaged, during the years 1768 to 1786, in a series of elaborate dissections to show the anatomy of the lymphatic system, and their researches led them to some interesting experiments in embalming. Sheldon proved himself a master in this gruesome art, and in some respects was superior, I think, to William Hunter, his master, and to Cruikshank, his fellow-worker. . . . Sheldon was engaged in the experimental embalming of dead bodies. . . . When his mistress . . . died of phthisis, he embalmed her and kept her in his bedroom until the lady he afterwards married turned her out. She is now stowed away in a back room of the Royal College of Surgeons, where I often visit her" (Power, Selected Writings, pp. 239 and 274). Plate VI illustrates Sheldon's injecting tube, with a description of its use.

Though subtitled "Part the First," this was the only part ever published. Each plate is accompanied by a page of explanatory text. A landmark work, with what are considered the first anatomical representations of the lacteals. Also of interest for its description of the embalming and preservation techniques (injections of quicksilver, etc.) perfected by the great anatomists William and John Hunter. The book is dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, president of the Royal Society, and the list of subscribers includes Banks, Thomas Beddoes, John Hunter, Antonio Scarpa, and many other prominent men of science and medicine. John Sheldon (1752-1808), a student of John and William Hunter, was a gifted anatomist and embalmer who pursued his craft to the point of eccentricity, if not mania: when his mistress died of phthisis, he dissected and embalmed her, displaying her body in a glass cabinet in his bedroom until the woman he later married turned her out, donating her to the Royal College of Surgeons. Brilliant but increasingly erratic, Sheldon was incapacitated by a "brain fever" in 1787, three years after the present work was published.

This copy is complete with the full list of subscribers and the errata and -- this is most unusual -- the plates are not foxed or stained, as they are usually. A fine copy: the best currently available.