Tentamen Philosophico-Medicum, De Electricitate. Quod Annuente Summo Numine, Ex Auctoritate Reverndi admodum Vir, Dr. Gulielmi Robertson, S. S. T. P.... Pro Gradu Doctoris... Eruditorum examini subjicit Abrahamus Wilkinson

Edinburgi: Apud Balfour et Smellie..., 1783. FIRST EDITION. Tall 8vo (in 4s), pp. [7] 8 - 61 [62 blank], contemporary tree calf, gilt border on covers, gilt spine; front joint cracked, lacks label, but a good copy with the autograph "Tho. Wilkinson/1786" on the front paste-down end-paper. The list of examiners for this doctoral dissertation on electrotherapy names Joseph Priestley, Hollis Edwards, and Josiah Thompson. This copy is likely an association copy twice over, as no doubt the Thomas Wilkinson who inscribed this copy is related to the Abraham Wilkinson who wrote the work, and likely both are related to the Wilkinson family that Joseph Priestley married into when, in June 1762, he married Mary Wilkinson, daughter of Isaac Wilkinson, the "prosperous ironmaster near Wrexham", on whom see David L. Wykes and Isabel Rivers, eds., Joseph Priestley: Scientist, Philosopher, and Theologian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) p. 33. Considering the large role that the Wilkinson family played in Priestley's life story (his brother-in-law John Wilkinson also provided him much financial support), and the large role that electricity played in Priestley's experimental career, this Thomas Wilkinson copy of the dissertation by Abraham Wilkinson examined by Joseph Priestley is no doubt a worthy accession to any collection concerned with Joseph Priestly, a scientist and thinker immensely important to both America and Britain, being a longtime resident of each country, and having discovered Oxygen in the latter. In the United States, Priestley is of course most closely associated with Pennsylvania, as he lived there from 1794 to 1804. This is ESTC T149564: the database shows that most extant copies of this work are in either Edinburgh University Library or the Wellcome Library of Medicine. There is no copy in the British Library, and only one university in the Ivy League has it: Yale. The ESTC does not identify Abraham Wilkinson, offering no life dates and no place of residence.�ictionaire des sciences medicales (1815), page 511: "C'est un partie dans cette these que M. Mauduyt a puise les observations qu'il a consignées dans son ouvrage." Wellcome Collection: Women in Medicine [online].