Medical Botany,

beautiful hand-coloured plates

First edition of this beautifully illustrated work on medical botany, with 274 hand-coloured plates, and including Woodville's first supplement of 1794 (the second was published in 1832, two decades after the author's death). This set with the ownership inscription of a woman, Sophia Mackenzie, who records that it was a gift from "my worthy and much esteemed friend, Doctor Sanders" in 1812 and updates the inscription in 1812 to leave it to another friend, George Henry Ward, at her death.

William Woodville (1752-1805) was a porminent London physician who made significant contributions to the development of smallpox vaccination, but he was also deeply interested in botany. 'He was elected to the Linnean Society in 1791, and maintained a botanic garden within the grounds of the Smallpox Hospital. Between 1790 and 1794 he published Medical Botany, a four-volume catalogue of plants, based on the pharmacopoeia of the royal colleges of physicians in London and Edinburgh. Each plant was described by both its botanical characteristics and its therapeutic uses, and illustrated with an engraving' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

First editions; 4 volumes, 4to (22.5 x 17 cm); 274 hand-coloured plates, bound without half titles, contemporary ownership inscription to the title of volume I, two small wax spots to the Aconitum napellus plate at page 16 in volume I, some light spotting, offsetting, and toning to contents, mainly in volume II; 20th century green half morocco, spines gilt in compartments with floral tools, marbled sides and endpapers, spines and edges of boards browned, endpapers tanned from turn-ins, white mark to the binding of volume III, a very good set; 578 and 169pp.

Henrey, 1521-22, Nissen, 2183.