Matthew BAILLIE / The Morbid Anatomy 1795 PATHOLOGY, CIVIL WAR INTEREST

  

First American Edition, stated, printed by by Barber & Southwick for Thomas Spencer, 1795. Contemporary tree calf, red leather lettering label on spine. Includes the engraved bookplate and signature of Philo Wright on the front endpapers. This appears to be Philander "Philo" Wright of Grand Rapids, MI, a veteran of Gettysburg who carried the colors of the 2nd Wisconsin into the battle, in which the regiment was decimated. An account appears in a 2013 New York Times article by Michael Kirschner on the 2nd Wisconsin Regiment's pivital role at Gettysburg.

Kirschner states that Wright had served as a surgeon's aide earlier in the war, and eventually became a surgeon and settled down in Grand Rapids. His bullet-riddled hat is now on display in the Wisonsin Veteran's Museum. I don't have further evidence that these "Philo Wrights" were one and the same, but the pieces do seem to add up.

Wright's bookplate bears a quotation from Horace, nocturna versate manu versatu diurna. FFEP also bears inked out signature of another ower, leaving behind the date, which looks like Nov 3 1818.

On the recto of the front fly is the signature of a John Field, with a contemporary price. Title page has the same crossing out of a signature and adding of Wright's. Hinges cracked, though with stitching still holding front and back boards, if tenuously. Wear to calf at head and foot of spine and to cover corners. Rubbing and light spotting to covers.

Pages appear unmarked, though with browning to printed area. 12 unnumbered pp of contents appear at rear following viii, 248pp.

Ownership aside, an important book in its own right: Per Garrison-Morton, this book was "the first systematic text-book of morbid anatomy"-today more commonly called anatomic pathology-treating the subject for the first time as an independent science. The 1793 London edition is Garrison-Morton 2281.