American Medical Botany, Being a Collection of the Native Medical Plants of the United States, Containing Their Botanical History and Chemical Analysis, and Properties and Uses in Medicine, Diet and the Arts, with Coloured Engravings. Boston: Cummings and Hilliard

3 vols., small 4to. 10 hand-colored engravings, 50 color-printed aquatints, tissue-guards; scattered foxing to plates and text, darkening to some plates underlying tissue-guards. Contemporary half red morocco, marbled boards; spines and extremities with some wear. Modern half leather clamshell-case.First edition of the “first American herbal and the first American book with color-printed plates” (Roylance). Jacob Bigelow’s attempt at precise color illustration of plants, economically and efficiently produced, is well known.The first ten plates were hand-colored engraved plates. This process was too laborious and Bigelow decided that color printing was more efficient and had the remainder of the plates produced in color. Johnson states that only 200 copies have the first ten plates in the first state, The book was originally issued in six parts.The earliest interests of Jacob Bigelow (1786-1879) included botany. He lectured at Harvard and was appointed professor of materia medica at the Harvard Medical School, a post he retained until 1855. His American Medical Botany along with Barton’s Vegetable materia medica (1817) are the first American botanical books with colored illustrations. Bigelow’s achievements are noteworthy—he drew many of the plates and devised the means of reproducing them through a color process. Richard Wolfe has suggested that the plates (excluding those produced for volume 1, part 1) are color-printed with some sort of etched stone technique.Dr. Bigelow’s influence was not only felt in the natural sciences, he was also interested in mechanics. This led to his appointment as Rumford professor of the application of science to useful arts at Harvard from 1816 to 1827 and to the publication of his Elements of Technology in 1829.This copy is from the library of Gordon W. Jones (1915-1987), distinguished physician and bibliophile of Virginia.References: Austin 205; Bennett p. 11; Cushing B384; Garrison/Morton 1842; Nissen BBI 164; Norman 234; Pritzel 733; Reese American Color Plate Books 9; Roylance American Graphic Arts p. 94; Sabin 5294; Wolfe Jacob Bigelow’s …. (1990)Provenance: Gordon W. Jones, M. D., Falmouth, VA (bookplate).…