Beschreibung:

COWPER, William. Myotomia reformata: or an anatomical treatise on the muscles of the human body . Edited by Richard Mead (1673-1754). London: Robert Knaplock, William and John Innys, and Jacob Tonson, 1724. First folio edition , greatly expanded from the first modest octavo edition with only 10 plates, published some 13 years previously. Cowper worked until his death on this superior folio edition of the human muscular system; it was published under the supervision and at the expense of the physician Richard Mead (1673-1754). With its 66 plates, some after Rubens and Raphael, its witty engraved initials and dramatic head- and tail-piece illustrations, this first folio edition ranks among the most artistically inventive anatomical atlases of the 17th and 18th centuries. Choulant-Frank, p. 253; Garrison and Morton 392.1; Heirs of Hippocrates 723; Norman 530; Osler 2384; Roberts & Tomlinson pp. 415-17; Russell 210; Wellcome II, p. 401. Folio (518 x 361mm). Title printed in red and black, engraved frontispiece, 67 engraved plates numbered to 66, with plate 13 in two states, engraved full-sheet table of the Syllabus musculorum , engraved text diagrams, fine engraved historiated initials and head- and tail-piece illustrations, several repeated, a few woodcut tailpieces and typographic head-piece ornaments (without blank leaf V2, frontispiece and title lightly soiled and spotted, scattered light spotting, occasional small stains). Contemporary speckled calf, (a little worn). Provenance : Sir John Brownlow (1690-1754), Viscount Tyrconnel – Belton House [the Brownlows’ estate in Lincolnshire] (bookplates).