Beschreibung:

Title: American Medical Botany, being a collection of the Native Medical Plants of the United States, containing their Botanical History and Chemical Analysis, and properties and uses in Medicine, Diet, and the Arts - Vols. I & II Author: Bigelow, Jacob Place: Boston Publisher: Cummings and Hilliard Date: 1817-1818 Description: 2 volumes (in 3) (of 6 parts in all). Illustrated with 26 hand-colored and color-printed plates. 10¼x7¼, original printed boards. First Edition. This is the first book with color-printed plates made in America and the first color-plate American botanical (along with Barton's Vegetable materia medica). "Bigelow originally intended to illustrate his massive work in traditional fashion with hand-colored copperplates...Finding this process too slow and expensive, Bigelow searched for a method that would allow the swift and easy application of color directly onto the plate" (Norman). The technique, a sort of aquatint, was developed independently of any knowledge of lithography. Richard Wolfe identified the first state by the presence of only hand-colored plates in Part I, as in this copy. Many copies have mixed hand-colored/color-printed plates (see Wolfe's monograph on this edition, 1979). Present is Volume I, Part 1, and Volume II, Parts 1 & 2. Incomplete, sold as is. Garrison/Morton 1842; Norman 234; Reese American Color Plate Books 9; Sabin 5294. Lot Amendments Condition: Front board of Vol. I, Part 1 missing; spines perished, volumes largely disbound, first title-page detached with loss, one repair; offsetting, darkening, foxing and some mildew stains to many plates (the 10 plates in Vol. II, Part 1 are clean); sold with all faults. Item number: 172384