Beschreibung:

COWPER, William (1666-1709). The anatomy of humane bodies... to which is added, an introduction, explaining the animal oeconomy, with a copious index . Oxford: printed at the Theater, for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1698. 2 o (593 x 356 mm). Two engraved titles, the first by A. Bloteling after Grard de Lairesse, the English title on a slip pasted down over the original title cartouche, the second title engraved to resemble letterpress with allegorical vignette by and after I. Sturt, 114 engraved plates numbered 1-1-5 and 1-9, the first series after Lairesse, probably by Bloteling, numbers 10 and 23 folding, the second series by Michiel van der Gucht after Henry Cook 2 woodcut text diagrams, woodcut initials and tailpieces. Most of the Lairesse plates letter-keyed in red ink to the English text. (Lacking the engraved portrait, a3 detached, scattered light spotting, some marginal soiling.) Contemporary blind-panelled calf tooled in blind, unidentfied gilt arms at center of covers (rebacked, quite worn and soiled, joints split). Provenance : 4 pages of 19th-century ms. notes on Bidloo and Cowper laid down on front pastedown; Dr. Fisher, Carfrae, modern pencil inscription on front pastedown. First English edition of Bidloo's anatomical plates. Either Cowper or his publishers obtained from Bidloo's publishers 300 sets of impressions of the engraved title and plates from his Anatomia humani corporis soon after the publication of the second Dutch edition in 1690. Cowper, a surgeon and fellow of the Royal Society, supplied the English text, and published the whole under his name, the only references to Bidloo being buried within the preface and the text. This so enraged the latter that he submitted to the Royal Society a printed accusation of Cowper ( Gulielmus Cowper, criminis literarii citatus... , Leiden 1700), in which he published his correspondence with the Englishman, with "much abusive language, and a minute criticism of Cowper as an anatomist" (DNB). Cowper responded in kind in a pamphlet published in 1701, denying Bidloo any rights to the plates, which he claimed to have been designed by Lairesse for Swammerdam. Although the concealment of Bidloo's name remains one of the most notorious instances of plagiarism in medical literature, Cowper's expanded text was in fact largely original and based on his own observations. The nine additional plates of the appendix illustrate the "external muscles, and divers parts of humane bodies which are either omitted, or not well exprest in the preceding tables". Choulant-Frank, p. 252; Garrison-Morton 385.1; cf. Heirs of Hippocrates 724; NLM/Krivatsy 2787; Wellcome II, p. 401; Wing C-6698; Norman 529.