Books and Manuscripts

Carswell, Robert
Pathological Anatomy. Illustrations of the Elementary Forms of Disease
London: Printed for the Author, and Published by Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1838. First edition. Folio. 109 unpaginated text leaves. Illustrated with 48 hand-colored lithographs, by and after Carswell; each with tissue-guard. Full modern blue buckram, stamped in gilt; all edges trimmed; light soiling to title-page, small tear and crease in bottom gutter of same; tape repair in upper fore-edge of tenth text leaf in “Analogous Tissues”; repair in fore-edge verso of Plate IV in “Mortification”; tape repair in top edge of second descriptive leaf in “Hemorrhage”; scattered minor thumb soiling and spotting to text. Garrison-Morton 2291; Osler 2250; Heirs to Hippocrates 1501

First edition of “one of the finest pathological atlases ever produced” (Heirs to Hippocrates). Carswell was professor of pathological anatomy at University College, London, and physician at the University College hospital when he was commissioned to make a series of pathological drawings. As Carswell explains in the present volume's Notice, he undertook the project to ease "the great difficulty, and frequently the impossibility, of comprehending even the best descriptions of the physical or anatomical characters of diseases, without the aid of coloured delineations." In the process, between 1828-31, he executed over 2,000 watercolors of diseased structures, of which 48 were chosen for this publication, and transferred to stone by Carswell himself. Commenting on the illustrations, noted physician William Osler wrote, they “have, for artistic merit and for fidelity, never been surpassed, while the matter represents the highest point which the science of morbid anatomy had reached before the introduction of the microscope." (Bibliotheca Osleriana). The work was originally issued in twelve parts, each with four hand-colored lithographs, with each part representing different pathological states, such as Inflammation, Analogous tissues, Atrophy, Hypertrophy, Pus, Mortification, Hemorrhage, Softening, Melanoma, Carcinoma (in two parts, with two sets of plates) and Tubercle.