Marrin's Bookshop

Synopsis

At the entrance into which, are demonstrated the proper muscles belonging to each lecture, now in general use at the theatre in chirurgeons-hall, london, and illustrated with two and forty copper-plates accurately engraven after the life, not only with their names, but their uses, fairly delineated on each plate, as much as can be exprest by figures; with an explanation of their names throughout the whole discourse: as also their originations, insertions, and uses, at large, in their proper descriptions, and various useful annotations, and curious observations both of the author's, and other modern anatomists. together with a phoilosophical and mathematical account of the mechanism of muscular motion, and an accurate and concise dscourse of the heart and its use, with the circulation of the blood, and c. and with a compleat account of the arteries and veins, as to their outward coats, proving them to be made with circular fleshy fibres, by whose contractions their trunks become narrowed, and the fluid particles of the blood are sent forwards into all the parts of the body. digested into this new method, by the care and study of john browne, sworn chirurgeon in ordinary to the king's most excellent majesty, and late senior chirurgeon of st. thomas's hospital, southwark. the second edition, with additions.

Item Description

Folio. 8 x 12 inches. frontis. + [8] + viii + [22] + x + 9-186 pp. [4], a-b2, [11], B-C2, d, D-2U1, 2X-3B2. (ESTC calls for 24 unnumbered pages between preface and treatise but we have not had the chance to compare with another copy). Illustrated by portrait frontispiece and [42] engraved plates. Includes dedications to William III and Earl of Sunderland, printing privilege, preface, 8 letters and poems of commendation list of subscribers and a Treatise on Muscular Dissection by Dr Bernard Connor at beginning; and Mathematical Disquisitions concerning Muscular Motion and An Appendix of the Heart and its Use: with the circulation of the blood and index at the end.

Notes

An influential treatise on muscular dissection, based on six lectures which may have been delivered in the Surgeon's Hall. It is illustrated by a superb collection of plates, many of them full page. The work was first published in 1681 as 'A Compleat Treatise of the Muscles' and the second enlarged edition in 1698. ESTC records only one copy of this 1705 reprint in a British library (Cambridge) and one in the USA. It is stated that the description of the muscles is based on Muskotomia by Willaim Molins (1648) and the plates partly taken from Tabula Anatomica by Giulio Casserio (1632 edition). John Browne (1642-1702/3?) came from Norwich and gained surgical experience in London and in the navy, being wounded in the Anglo-Dutch war of 1665-67. About 1675 he was appointed surgeon-in-ordinary to Charles II and surgeon at St Thomas's Hospital in 1683. He published other works on medicine, including the first recorded description of cirrhosis of the liver (1685) and the best surviving account of touching for the king's evil (1684).