Lot 170: QUAIN, Jones (1796-1865) and William James Erasmus WILSON (1809-1884). A Series of Anatomical Plates , comprising: The Muscles of the Human Body . - The Vessels of the Human Body . - The Nerves of the Human Body . - The Viscera of the Human Body

QUAIN, Jones (1796-1865) and William James Erasmus WILSON (1809-1884). A Series of Anatomical Plates, comprising: The Muscles of the Human Body. - The Vessels of the Human Body. - The Nerves of the Human Body. - The Viscera of the Human Body. - The Bones and Ligaments of the Human Body. London: Taylor and Walton, 1836- 1842.

Together 5 volumes, 2o (508 x 325 mm). 201 lithographed plates (most hand-colored) (some occasional pale spotting and pale offsetting from text). (Viscera vol. lacking title-page.) Modern half calf, original gilt-lettered cloth covers mounted on front sides of each volume. Provenance: W.W. Wagstaffe (signature crossed out on title-page of Muscles vol.); Robert W. Reid? (signature on title-page of Muscles vol.).

FIRST EDITIONS OF THE MOST AMBITIOUS ENGLISH ANATOMY ILLUSTRATED BY LITHOGRAPHY. Most sets are uncolored, and often incomplete. The five parts, published over six years, describe the muscles, blood vessels, nerves, viscera, and bones and ligaments. Wilson designed the plates for this work, and signed some of them, but the plates were actually drawn by other artists, including J. Walsh and William Bagg, a portrait painter in London. Wilson also co-edited the second through fifth volumes. The section on the anatomy of the nerves is especially notable, with thirty-eight plates, including ten elegant colored plates of the brain and spinal cord, and a stunning colored plate showing the distribution of the eighth pair of nerves. Choulant-Frank p. 404; Heirs of Hippocrates 1550; McHenry, Garrison's History of Neurology p. 158; Roberts & Tomlinson pp. 559-60; Welcome IV, p. 452.