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Sm. 8vo. [iii-xxiv], 169, [1], [3], [1 blank] pp. Lacks first leaf (but supplied in photocopy facs.), a large folding portrait engraved by R. White showing the author in 1668, aged 38 years (179x134mm), M8 also not present [unknown content, if any], as per usual. Modern quarter dark brown calf, marbled boards (rather amateurishly handled, the binder having signed his name - J. L. Miller M.B.C.[!?] to the rear pastedown), same hand with ms. notes on ffep '34' [1934?], again the name is difficult to read. Early British bookseller's catalogue description mounted, another laid in. Bookplate of Joseph Lyon Miller, MD. Very rare. First (only) edition. 'An attack on regular physicians with a commendation of the author's own chemical 'catholick medicine.' [Gaskell]. Note: Some copies refer to a portrait included with this edition [see Wellcome Library (2 copies) EPB/A/36061 and/or EPB/A/65580, and Sotheby's 1958 sale of this title 'portrait defective and laid down']. Gaskell (Catalogue 36, item 81, includes a portrait), makes clear that the portrait is rarely present and that the portrait is significantly larger than the book's format, and further, that the final leaf M8 was also 'missing', probably usual for this book. Other copies do not refer to the presence of a portrait, thus there are two issues of the work. See also: Swann Sale, April 5, 1979, Sale Number 1137, lot 624. These are the two most recent appearances of this book at auction. The Huntington copy is probably the Swann 1979 copy as it bears the bookplate provenance of Otto Oren Fisher (1881-1961), and I seem to recall Swann selling his collection at about that time. / 'In 1668, along with further editions of his works on scurvy and consumption, Maynwaring published perhaps his most ambitious book, Medicus Absolutus Adespotos, or the Compleat Physician (imprimatur 27 February; dedication dated 8 March), which justified physicians composing and prescribing their own medicines as a necessary return to the ancient method of physic from the corruption of modern practices. This argument was developed in 'The Ancient Practice of Physick Revived and Confirmed', forming the second half of The Pharmacopeian Physician's Repository (1669) and then in Praxis Medicorum Antiqua et Nova (1671, licensed 17 March, with preface from his house in Fetter Lane). He distinguishes various types of practitioners. His severest criticisms are of 'practising apothecaries' (apothecaries who offered medical advice) and 'chymical empiricks' whose purely empirical methods and fraudulent claims he denounced as strenuously as any College physician might. Unlike some of his fellow chymical physicians he never praised empirical medicines in comparison with Galenic ones, and explicitly rejected Marchamont Nedham's argument 'that there should be a liberty allowed in the profession of physick', which he predicted would see 'a monstrous brood of illiterate practisers' as 'the whole profession would fall into the captivity of rude, mechanic invaders'. . .' / Maynwaring (1628â "1699?), medical writer, studied at St. John's College, Cambridge and Dublin, ahead of his time, condemning tobacco smoking, violent purges, who converted to chemistry to make solves for medicinal benefit. PROVENANCE: Joseph Lyon Miller, MD (1875-1957), resident of Thomas, West Virginia, an alumnus of the Medical College of Virginia and a practicing physician in Thomas, W. Va., over several decades he collected rare books, manuscripts, prints, and ephemera concerning medical history in the South, the United States generally, and Great Britain. Clearly he tried his hand at bookbinding as well (as with this particular volume). He turned his collection over to the Richmond Academy of Medicine in the 1930s, who in turned placed it at the Virginia Historical Society in 1988. REFERENCES: DNB, XIII, pp. 168-9; (STC) Wing M1497; ESTC (RLIN), R32063 (does not call for a portrait); Krivatsy 7637; Wellcome IV, p. 91. See: Roger Gaskell, Edwin Clarke.
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