Botanologia. The English Herbal: or, History of Plants

I. Dawks, 1710. ~FULL TITLE: Botanologia. The English herbal: or, History of plants. Containing I. Their names, Greek, Latine and English. II. Their Species, or various Kinds. III. Their Descriptions. IV. Their Paces of Growth. V. Their times of Flowering and Seeding. VI. Their Qualities or Properties. VII. Their Specifications. VIII. Their Preparations, Galenick and Chymick. IX. Their Virtues and Uses. X. A complete FLORILEGIUM, of all the Choice FLOWERS cultivated by our FLORISTS, interspersed through the whole Work, in their proper Places; where you have their Culture, Choice, Increase, and Way of Management, as well for Profit as Delectation. Adorned with exquisite ICONS or FIGURES, of the most considerable Species, representing to the LIFE, the true Forms of those several PLANTS. The whole in an Alphabetical Order. By William Salmon, M.D.~Full original dark brown calf. Rebacked in matching calf with original spine laid down. Raised bands & gilt ruling to spines. Wear to boards, with some loss on corners. Blind rolled border to boards. Blind decor to board edges, worn. Page edges red, much faded. Folio (26 x 41cm). Discreet repairs to inner hinges. Title page printed in red/black. Worm holes of varying size to bottom outer corner of many pages, no text affected. Page edges worn to index. A couple of tears (c. 7cm) to index, but text still legible. A very few ink marks to index, otherwise text unmarked. Browning to some pages. Publication date written in crayon to base of title page. Elaborate pictorial title page, signed 'E. Knight delin:'; 'M: Vdr: Gucht Sculp:' (Michael van der Gucht, Flemish engraver; frequently worked from originals by E. Knight). 4pp. dedication to Queen Anne. 'Index Plantarum' (44pp) and 'Index morborum' (6pp) to rear (the latter, as per ESTC, found only in some copies). The work exists in two forms (see Henrey): a single volume, continuously paginated, with running head-line 'Lib. I' throughout (this copy), and also as 2 vols, with second title page before vol. II. Our copy is thus complete as it stands, and indeed includes the rare 'Index moborum'. William Salmon (1644-1713), medical empiric and author. Contemporaries claimed that as a boy Salmon was apprenticed to a mountebank, entertaining audiences as a 'zany' by 'tumbling through a hoop', and accompanying his master on travels that included a trip to New England. Salmon later established himself in London as an irregular medical practitioner and author, publishing widely on medical, alchemical, and domestic concerns. He published his Botanologia, 'later recalled as 'the swan song of the great English herbalists'' (ODNB), in 1710-11. While the Botanologia is a traditional work in many ways, and was criticised at the time for its Galenic sympathies, it bears the mark of Salmon's travels in the New World: he celebrates the potato, 'which grows in vast plenty in many of our English Gardens, so much that now the Roots are sold in bushels in our London Markets' (p. 905), and mentions that he has seen tomatoes ('love apples') grow in Carolina (p. 29). ESTC T83065; Henrey 1308.. 1st edition. Hardback. Very Good. (vi), xxiv, 1296, (50)pp. Frontis & many illus. Binding tight.