American Medical Botany, Being A Collection of the Native Medicinal Plants of the United States, by Bigelow, Jacob, 1786-1879. Annin, William B., 1791?-1839, engraver. Smith, George Girdler, 1795-1878, engraver - 1817, 1818, 1820: Containing Their Botanical History and Chemical Analysis, and Properties and Uses in Medicine, Diet and the Arts, with Coloured Engravings.

By Jacob Bigelow, M.D. Rumford Professor and Lecturer on Materia Medica and Botany in Harvard University.

Boston: Published by Cummings and Hilliard, at the Boston Bookstore, No. 1, Cornhill, 1817 [-1820].

R. B. Austin, Early American Medical Imprints, 205; Bennett page 11; BM Natural History I: 162; Meisel III, page 378; Nissen (Botanical) 164; Pritzel 773; Reese, Stamped with a National Character, 10; Roylance, American Graphic Arts (Princeton), 1990), page 94; Wolfe, Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany (1979), passim.

The first American book with color printing, notable for its fine plates, and also a foundation work in American botanical studies. Bigelow, a native of Massachusetts, attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, where he became keenly interested in botany as a student of Benjamin Smith Barton, then a professor of materia medica as well as the leading botanist in the United States. Following his graduation in 1810, Bigelow entered private practice in Boston and himself became a professor of materia medica at Harvard Medical School in 1815. His botanizing had already produced his Florula Bostoniensis (1814) and, once installed at Harvard, he began on this, his best known work. According to Bigelow's own later account, he had first intended to produce the plates for his work by printing engravings and having them hand-colored, but decided that that would be too expensive, since he envisioned an edition of one thousand copies with sixty plates each. Ultimately he had the plates printed using aquatint, with ink applied to the plates "à la poupée"-- a method by which different color inks are daubed onto the printing plates using a piece of cloth. Richard Wolfe, in his book on Bigelow, asserts that a process of creating plates by etching stone was used, but more recent work by Philip Weimerskirch and others has established that the aquatint process was indeed used, and in fact Bigelow himself has left us a very specific account of the book's production.

"An edition of a thousand copies was printed" --Vol. 2, page [v]. "The style of engraving is wholly new in this country, and is one which has been successfully attempted only by the first artists in France"-- Vol. 2, page vi. For a detailed account of production and publication see Richard J. Wolfe, Jacob Bigelow's American Medical Botany (North Hills, PA, Bird & Bull Press, 1979)-- superseded in part by Weimerskirch's "The Beginning of Color Printing in America" (in Printing History No. 48 (2005), pages 25-40), in which he establishes that the plates are normal copperplate etching with aquatint and stipple. All were printed from single plates except 24, in which black details were printed from a separate plate over green.

Boxed set of three uniformly leather-bound volumes: 1: xi, [17]-197, [1] pages, XX numbered leaves of plates; 2: xvi, [15]-199, [1] pages, XXI-XL numbered leaves of plates; 3: x, [11]-197, [1] pages, XLI-LX numbered leaves of plates; 26 cm. Each plate has a tissue guardsheet. Systematic Index, Latin Index, and English Index at end of vol. 3. Bound in full tree leather, edges & spines stamped in gold; hinges & caps expertly repaired in 2012 by Hope Bindery, who also made the box. Pencil owner name of Dr. Benjamin Jones Perry [1805-1889] of Montgomery County, Md. on title-page of each volume; Perry moved his practice to Washington D.C. in 1860. Very Good. Stock#OB950.