American medical botany,
being a collection of the native medicinal plants of the United States, containing their botanical history and chemical analysis, and properties and uses in medicine, diet and the arts, with coloured engravings /
By Jacob Bigelow, M.D. Rumford Professor and lecturer on materia medica and botany in Harvard University. Vol. I[-III]
Description
- Language(s)
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English
- Published
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Boston, Published by Cummings and Hilliard; [Cambridge] University Press, Hilliard and Metcalf, 1817-20 [i.e. 1817-21]
- Note
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Copies were distributed to subscribers in printed paper boards (with errata for v.1, pt.1 and v.2, pt.2 on the back covers), or in various styles of sheep or calf bindings; see Wolfe, p. 65-76.
Some copies of vol. 1, pt. 1 (pl. 1-10) were issued with the plates in an earlier state as hand-colored etchings; comparison of the two states shows that the same copper plates, heavily reworked, were used to print the later state, which conforms to contemporary accounts quoted by Weimerskirch.
"'The style of engraving is wholly new in this country, and is one which has been successfully attempted only by the first artists in France."--Vol. 2, p. vi. An account of the book's production and publication is given in Richard J. Wolfe, Jacob Bigelow's American medical botany (North Hills, Pa.: Bird and Bull Press, 1979), superseded in part by Philip J. Weimerskirch, "The beginning of color printing in America", in Printing history, no. 48 (2005), p. 25-40. Based on a reference to "stones" in a printer's estimate that he had misdated, Wolfe described a method of intaglio printing from lithographic stones. Weimerskirch demonstrates that the estimate dates from no earlier than 1837, and that the plates are copperplate etchings with aquatint and stipple. The principal figures were inked either in green only or "à la poupée" (perhaps using a brayer or brush) in green and one other color (except pl. 7, fig. 1 inked in green, red, and black); smaller figures were inked in black, green, or other single colors, as were captions and numbering, which often share the ink of the neighboring image, and hand coloring was frequently used in detailed passages. All were printed from single plates except pl. 24, in which black details were printed over green using a separate plate."--from Brown University catalog record.
Issued in 6 parts.
- Physical Description
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3 v. : 60 leaves of col. plates :
ill. ;
26 cm
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