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First edition, very rare, of this work on the upcoming transit of Venus in 1769. Stone (1702-68) is best known for his discovery of aspirin. "This book, of which there is an imperfectly bound copy in the Royal Society's library, predicts some of the places from which the next, 1769, transit could best be observed. A second edition of this book, enlarged to accommodate the transits of Mercury as well as Venus, appeared in 1768" (Pierpoint, Edward Sone (1702-1768) and Edmund Stone {1700-1768): confused identities resolved, Notes Rec. R. Soc. Lond. 51 (1997), 211-217). "Stone was born in Lacey Green near Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, in 1702, the only son of Edward Stone, yeoman, and his wife Elizabeth. He matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford, in 1720 and graduated BA (1724) and MA (1727). He was elected a fellow of Wadham in 1730 and retained this position for 11 years, acting, according to college records, as librarian, bursar, dean and subwarden. He resigned in 1741 to marry his stepmother's niece, Elizabeth Grubb. By this time he was rector of Horsenden and soon to be appointed rector at Drayton near Banbury and made Chaplain to Sir Jonathan Cope at Bruem Abbey (Oxfordshire). He moved to Chipping Norton in 1745, and although he probably spent most of the rest of his life there, he was never its vicar. His ecclesiastical duties were probably comparatively light, so that he had time to play the expected role as Justice of the Peace, and also to be a political agent for the Whig interests as well as to attend to the local sick. Apart from his medical and mathematical letters to the Royal Society, four volumes in the library at Wadham College confirm his interest in theological, historical and astronomical subjects. He died in Chipping Norton in 1768 but was buried at Horsenden" (ibid.). "Walking one day through a meadow near Chipping Norton, while suffering from 'agues', Stone was prompted to detach and nibble at a small piece of bark from a willow tree and was struck by its extremely bitter taste. Knowing that the bark of the Peruvian cinchona tree, from which quinine (used in the treatment of malarial fevers) is derived, has a similarly bitter taste, he surmised that the willow might also have therapeutic properties . . . He experimented by drying a pound of willow bark and creating a powder which he gave to about fifty persons: it was consistently found to be a powerful astringent and very efficacious in curing agues and intermitting disorders. He had discovered salicylic acid, the principal metabolite of aspirin" (Wikipedia). In 1763 Stone sent a letter announcing his discovery to Lord Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society. OCLC lists Adler Planetarium and Bowdoin only in US. Library Hub lists BL, Bodleian, National Library of Scotland, Royal Society, Trinity College Dublin. 8vo, pp. [2], 3-108, woodcut diagrams in text. Contemporary (or slightly later) blue paper wrappers.
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