1866. Small folio, pp. [ii], 4 with ten engraved plates and plans (one double-page); some occasional minor marginal dust-soiling, and some light foxing; First separate edition of this attractively illustrated architectural account of the design and construction of the new anatomical Institute at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Berlin, by the noted German architect Friedrich Albert Cremer (1824-1891). The engraved plates include depiction’s of some of the finer details of the building, including some of the ornate light fittings, and even the water closets, with plans of the proposed grounds also included.
Cremer, the son of the builder Johann Peter Cremer (1785-1853), studied architecture at the Berlin Academy in 1846. After some time spent in the Prussian Army as a hydraulics engineer, he returned to Berlin in 1859 and was appointed as a building Inspector. His first major architectural project, together with Carl Johann Christian Zimmermann (1831-1911), was an expansion to the Berlin debt prison to create a women’s prison. This was followed by his two most famous commissions for the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität: designing both a new Anatomical Institute building as discussed here, and under the guidance of the new director of Chemistry August Wilhelm von Hofmann, a new purpose-built chemistry laboratory, about which Cremer also published a similar account in 1868, Das neue chemische laboratorium zu Berlin.
The present account was also published in Zeitschrift für Bauwesen 16/1866 and 17/1867. OCLC locates copies at Cornell, the New York Public Library, the NLM, Glasgow, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Library.

[1838.]. 8vo, pp. [iv], 102; with four large folding lithograph plates; lightly foxed and browned throughout due to paper quality, with some further occasional minor soiling, minor ink staining on verso of first plate, with other three plates a little creased and with evidence of previous folds; Uncommon first edition of this detailed work, based very much on first hand experience, on the design and management of boilers, and the work of the Manchester engineer Robert Armstrong. The work bears testament, therefore, to the many technical and mechanical advances which emanated from the town, thanks to the rapid growth of the cotton industry which had transformed Manchester from being a small market town with a popular of 10,000 at the turn of the century, to becoming Britain’s second city by the 1840s, and home to nearly 400,000.
Indeed Armstrong dedicates his work to the ‘Cotton Manufacturers and other Proprietors of Steam engines, in Manchester and its vicinity, who have afforded him many opportunities of obtaining a variety of information on practical details’. This first edition is printed on rather cheap paper, the four large folding plates containing somewhat crude illustrations done reproduced from his original drawings in lithograph, a fact which Armstrong rather ruefully acknowledges in his concluding remarks, his publisher clearly having had little faith in its sale and suggesting only a limited initial print run ‘to meet a merely local sale’. Whilst he prides himself upon his boiler-making workmanship, his limited budget had not allowed him to use skilled engravers and printers, when it came to his bookmaking. An interesting commentary, perhaps, upon how lithography was considered to be a less skilled profession.
The poor design and management of boilers was frequently the Achilles heel of the steam engine, preventing their efficient and economic running. Armstrong focuses in particular upon boilers for mill engines, though there is a small section describing locomotive boilers. He deals with high and low pressure boilers, form and proportions, the capacity of the steam chamber and what happens when the boiler is too small, together with rules for alteration and improvement. There is advice on re-setting boilers in order to save fuel, methods of estimating power, the best form of fire-grate, boiler cleansing machinery and ways to get rid of scale and boiler balls, which clogged up pipes and flues, and on the cause and prevention of explosions. Various types of boiler, such as the Boulton and Watt boiler or Durham and Cornish boilers are referred to and some leading contemporary books, such as Tredgold and Pambour, are cited. A practical and thorough work. OCLC locates copies at Toronto, Michigan, the British Library and Manchester.

1927. 8vo, pp. 469-480; with five text illustrations and halftones; paper a little soiled and browned; Offprint of this the second of two important papers by the Austrian/US physicist Marietta Blau (1894-1970), published during her time as an unpaid researcher at the Institute of Radium Research, Vienna (1923-1938), outlining her pioneering work on the development of the photographic method of detecting and observing nuclear particles and reactions, a method which was to play a prominent role in nuclear physics in the following decades. Considered extraordinarily gifted by Albert Einstein, Blau was nominated three times for the Nobel prize in physics, twice by Erwin Schrodinger. ‘Blau began to explore the possibility of finding protons and smashed atoms using photographic emulsions. Finally, in 1925, she succeeded in detecting the fragments of atoms hit by alpha particles, [Über die photographische Wirkung natürlicher H-Strahlen] including the thinner, harder-to-find tracks of protons. These experiments were followed in 1926 and 1927 by a series of experiments in which Blau bombarded aluminium with alpha particles in order to measure the nuclear fragments that would emerge. Unfortunately, with a week radioactive source (the only kind available to her), she had to settle for the very lowest energy particles. It was clear that is she was going to make fast protons visible (as opposed to the much more heavily ionizing nuclear fragments or slow-moving protons), she would have to improve both the emulsion and the development process that would bring out the narrow tracks’ (Galison, Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, p. 150).
Blau received her Ph.D. in 1919 with a thesis on ray physics and the absorption of gamma rays. Following her doctorate she moved to Berlin in 1921, taking a position with a company that manufactured X-ray tubes. This was followed by a position at the Institute for Medical Physics at the University of Frankfurt where she worked and published papers on X-ray physics. ‘Blau’s sex and her Jewish background impeded her professional advancement in Austria ... When the Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, Blau, who was out of the country at the time, did not return. She worked briefly in Oslo at the invitation of her friend Ellen Gleditsch, then relocated to Mexico City. In 1944 Blau moved to New York, where she worked on radioactivity and took out several patents. She then did research at Columbia University and at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Afterward she took a position at the University of Miami’. Due to the brevity of her employment in the United States, Blau’s retirement income was very low. In order to economize on expenses, she returned to Austria for an eye operation. Poor health caused in part by radiation exposure prevented her from returning to the United States, and she died impoverished in Vienna’ (Ogilvie I, 143). Grolier Club, ‘Extraordinary Women’ pp. 57-60; Ogilvie I, p. 143; see Strohmaier and Rosner, ‘Marietta Blau, Stars of Disintegration: Biography of a Pioneer of Particle Physics’ 2006.

1910. Chromolithograph trade card, 126 x 96mm, printed on both sides, verso a little browned, with small tear at tail touching a couple of letters. A striking trade card celebrating ‘Wampole’s Preparation’, and notably its receipt of a Gold Medal at the International Health Exhibition of 1910, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
This tonic, containing extracts of cod livers, malt, calcium and wild cherry, was created in the 1880s by Henry K Wampole in Philadelphia. It found a ready market with doctors, providing as it did a way of administering cod liver oil in a more palatable form, having masked both the taste and odour of the oil. The company soon expanded with a large and well equipped second laboratory opened in Ontario in 1905. As the present striking card attests, it clearly found an International market. Seemingly not in Atwater.

1892. Small 8vo, pp. [vi], 44; with 7 full-page half tone plates, and further illustrations within the text, together with head- and tailpieces; some occasional light marginal soiling and foxing; with library label on front paste down, and library deaccession stamp on front free endpaper, and a number of smaller though quite discreet stamps throughout; An attractively printed account by Robert Boyle the younger, the noted Glasgow sanitary engineer and inventor and adept self-promoter, recounting his experiences during his ‘fourth crusade’ around the world, studying sanitary science and promoting sanitary reform through his own inventions.
Robert Boyle Senior (c. 1820-1878) was a practical religious philanthropist, who established charitable bakeries for Glasgow's poor, and delivered earnest, illustrated 'missionary lectures'. He opened an industrial museum promoting temperance but it failed in 1857. In 1866 he successfully demonstrated 'safe' high-explosives. Robert Boyle Junior (1850–1930) went into business with his father, and from 1870 onwards, to counter 'foul air' and harmful gaslight vapours, they developed their 'patent self-acting air-pump' roof and ship ventilators. These eliminated 'down-draught' and utilised natural air currents. They solicited testimonials from eminent scientists such as Lord Kelvin and Sir Joseph Lister, and from noted architects which adorned their full-page adverts. They won multiple prizes at international sanitary exhibitions (e.g. 1881, 1884, Paris 1900), and prominent clients included Caius College, Cambridge and St Paul's Cathedral and the Royal Society's Burlington House in London.
From their London offices at 64 Holborn Viaduct, Boyle Junior began his world-wide 'sanitary crusades' in which he would preach a doctrine of health through the breathing of pure air. Reports on Boyle's travels appeared in the Building News during the early 1890s. The present work is an account of his fourth such venture, visiting Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Siam, Borneo, Java, Australia, New Zealand, Samoa and the Sandwich Islands. He is particularly struck by the sight of the lepers at the Shway Dagohn Pagoda in Burma, who lined the steps from top to bottom, and all “suffering from that loathsome disease in its worst forms and most advanced stages” (p. 6). He observes further terrible cases in Mandalay and in the Sandwich Islands, Boyle believing it to be one of the greatest scourges of the day, and seemingly little tackled by the medical authorities. ‘Mr Boyle has a theory that the practice of cannibalism has had in the past much to do with the propagation of this terrible scourge, the disease being spread wholesale through the eating of infected bodies’ (p. 43). He also witnesses cholera and smallpox in Bangkok, discusses the water supply in Rangoon, sanitation in Sydney and Melbourne, public buildings in Adelaide, house drainage in Christchurch, and discusses the recent revolution in Honolulu. An account of this trip appeared in Nature 47, 105-106 (01 December 1892).
By the beginning of the 20th century Boyle had amassed a large fortune and in 1902 he donated £100,000 towards hygiene education in schools in 1902. When he died over £169,000 of his estate was bequeathed to charity.

1871. Small folio, pp. vi, [2], 28; with six partially hand-coloured lithograph plates; some foxing throughout, more prominent in early leaves, with some staining and foxing to plates; Uncommon first edition of this finely illustrated anatomical treatise on the femoral vein, by the noted German anatomist Wilhelm Braune (1831–1892), published just a year before his groundbreaking and iconic ‘Topographische-anatomischer Atlas’ (1872), famous for its use of frozen sections.
Braune studied at the universities of Göttingen and Würzburg, and in 1872, became professor of topographical anatomy at the University of Leipzig. His works are renowned for his excellent use of lithography to depict the anatomy of the human body, of which this is a striking and early example. A second edition was published in 1873, together with a companion volume ‘Die Venen der menschlichen Hand’, and which are sometimes found together. These preliminary works and studies eventually culminated in his publication of ‘Das venensystem des menschlichen körpers’ (1884-1889), and which GM remarks was also ‘notable for its excellent illustrations’. OCLC locates copies at Cambridge, Edinburgh, the Royal College of Surgeons, Chicago, Michigan, Columbia, NYAM and Cleveland.

1779. Single engraved sheet, sheet size 300 x 640mm, image size 285 x 625mm; hand-coloured; evidence of three previous vertical folds, with small hole in centre of left fold with minor loss, some light surface wear, paper a little browned and foxed, with neat repair along lower margin; very good. A rare hand-coloured engraving showing the side elevation and top view plan of an attractive six arch self-supporting stone bridge, and the design of the noted Montpellier architect Jean-Antoine Giral (1713-1787). According to the running headline the bridge ‘a été exécuté à Montpellier, en pierre de taille sur l’Echelle d’un pied par toise; c’est a dire, le sixieme du Grand, au quel on a done trente pouces de largeur. Representant quinze pieds en grand pour la moité de trente pieds de largeur d’une cette a l’autre il est entre pour les six arches sans les culées, 1000 pieds cubes de pierre de taille, pezant 2000 quintaux, qui sont soutenus sans aucune pille ni pillier sur lequel pont on roule des brouettes remplies de boulets de canon pesant douze à quinze quintaux sans que les arches reçoivent le plus petit mouvement, présentant au contraire, la plus grand solidité, depuis environ une année, que ce pont est construit’. The attractive engraving is signed by Giral and dated August 24th 1779.
Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to identify the bridge, or to ascertain for certain whether it was ever constructed, or whether this is merely a proposal for future discussion - which seems more likely.
We have found no other mention of this engraving. Giral, from a distinguished family of architects, was named state architect for Languedoc and he was entrusted with the design of a number of municipal and public edifices, most notably the water fountain at Peyrou, and the Royal Promenade which linked the water tower to the Montpellier Aquaduct. He was also responsible for the design of the new Pont sur la Mosson at Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone, built to replace one destroyed by a severe flood, and completed in 1766. The present engraving certainly bears some resemblance to that bridge, and as a number of other bridges in the area had been damaged during flooding, it seems likely that he had been called upon for new proposals.

1911. Large folio broadside, 615 x 505mm, pictorial chromolithograph surround and red letterpress, surrounded by gilt border, with larger 95mm tear at tail just touching gilt border, and with further small nicks and tears along upper and right margin; A most attractively printed certificate of merit, evoking images of a bygone era pre WWI when traditional rural skills still held sway. Presented to Elea Adine Hare, this large certificate of merit recognises her ‘Proficiency in the Theory and Practice of Cheddar Cheesemaking’, and was awarded in 1911 after examination. Printed in red letterpress, the text is surrounded by a series of appealing vignettes in lithograph depicting various scenes of farming life.
According a family genealogy found online, Elea Adine Hare (1894-1926) was born in 1894 in Saffron Walden, Essex. The tranquil life that she enjoyed as evoked by the certificate was soon to be altered dramatically, as she subsequently served as a Red Cross nurse during WWI. After the war she was employed by the Essex County Council as a milk recorder, but was fatally injured in some sort of accident near a street corner, probably after being struck by a car. She subsequently died on Aug. 14, 1926 at the hospital in Saffron Walden.

1804. 4to, pp. [ii] title-page, 135, [1] blank; with four folding copper engraved plates; aside from some minor spotting and soiling, clean and fresh, printed on thick paper; First edition, and most attractively printed, of this collection of memoirs presented before the Paduan Academy, by the noted anatomist Leopoldo Marco Antonio Caldani (1725-1813). Caldani succeeded Morgagni in the chair of anatomy at Padua, where he was already professor of theoretical medicine. Best remembered for the monumental Icones Anatomicae (1801-1814) published in conjunction with his nephew Florian Caldani (1772-1836), Caldani was the author of a number of works on anatomy and pathology, and announced several anatomical discoveries in various academic publications. The present collection includes seven memoirs on a variety of topics: a comparative examination of the structure of human and bovine bones (19 Marzo 1795); on the composition of the teeth (9 Febbraro 1797); some special remarks on the lymphatics and veins of the mesentery (23 Aprile 1789); research on the causes of the force and duration of the constant motion of the heart and the extreme susceptibility of its internal walls (28 Febbraro 1799); a singularly monstrous foetus (2 Marzo 1787, and accompanied by a striking plate); and a dissertation on a child with missing arms (2 June 1796, and also accompanied by an engraving); and finally a memoir on respiration.

1765. Two works in one volume, first work in two parts, small folio; pp. [x], 10, 152, 151-8, [159] part title dated 1761, [160] blank, [161]-200, with attractive woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials, with one half page copper engraving on p. 163, and 20 copper engraved plates (of which four folding, plate XII particularly large): pp. [iv], 316, with woodcut headpieces, and with 28 copper engraved plates (of which three folding, plate IV another large and striking image); pp. [x], vi, 254, [2] errata and blank, with attractive woodcut head- and tail-pieces and initials; paper a little browned throughout due to quality, with some occasional faint marginal dampstaining, with some slightly more prominent staining in a couple of places in part II of the Acta at pp. 120-124 and p. 141-3, small stamped monograph of ‘G.D.’ on verso of both main title-pages, and some occasional neat pencil annotations and ink corrections in text; overall clean and crisp; First editions of two classic late eighteenth century works on mining technology and the history of mining in Germany, attractively illustrated with a number of detailed copper engravings, the work of Hans Calvör (1686-1766), a teacher at Clausthal and pastor at Altenau.
The ‘Acta historico-chronologico-mechanica’ is one of the most impressive and important German works on mining technology of the 18th century. “A valuable record of mining machinery and mining operations, as practised in Germany during the middle of the XVIIIth century. It was intended as a supplement to Schlüter’s Gründlicher Unterricht von Hüttenwerken” (Sotheran 1st supplement 6384). The attractive plates depict machinery, tunnels, and metallurgical apparatus. It is here bound together with Calvör’s invaluable historical companion volume, and which prints for the first and only time much original material which is now lost concerning the most important mining area of Germany. Mining had been carried on in the Harz mountains since the middle of the 10th century and Clausthal and St Andreasberg in the Upper Harz were the chief centres, and were sources of a number of metals and minerals including silver, lead, gold, copper, iron, sulphur, alum, and arsenic. The two works thus provide an important and invaluable insight late eighteenth century mining practices. Ferchl p. 82; Poggendorff I, 364; Roller/Goodman I, 196; OCLC locates copies Yale, Harvard, the Library of Congress, Columbia, Linda Hall, Lehigh, Oklahoma, Chicago, Stanford, Manchester, Cambridge and the British Library.

1860. 8vo, pp, [8], with eight woodcut illustrations, four of which have been crudely hand-coloured, and with running alphabet at the head of six pages; generally clean and crisp; An appealing and scarce chapbook, reprinting the popular tale of Jenny Wren, and issued by the noted firm of W.S. Fortey. The McGill copy has the same illustrations hand-coloured in the same style.
During the 19th century the printing industry became much more technologically advanced, resulting in a major increase in the speed and output per printing press, and a consequent reduction in the cost of printing. Literacy had greatly improved through all sections of society, and the demand for cheap newspapers, journals and novels was unparalleled at any point in British history. Printers such as WS Fortey embraced new technology such as steam printing, and were very active as the printers of cheap chapbooks, posters, leaflets and trade cards. OCLC locates copies at McGill, Pittsburgh, Cambridge and Monash, with further digitalised copies located.

1930. Small 8vo, pp. 255, [1] advertisement, and with map on verso of front free endpaper, and further advertisement on recto of final free endpaper; paper a little browned due to paper quality; A comprehensive price list of ‘special preparations, and a general run of chemicals and drugs, in consecutive order’, and issued by the famous London pharmaceutical firm of William Martindale.
The company was best remembered for its extensive compendium of pharmacy, ‘The Extra Pharmacopoeia’ first published in 1883, and by the 1930 had reached its 19th edition, as promoted on the final leaf of the present trade list.
William Martindale (1840-1902) began trading in 1873, the business being situated in New Cavendish Street, and trading as W. Martindale. In the 1890s William's son, William Harrison Martindale (1874-1932) assumed control of his father's firm and expanded the manufacturing side of the business. 1928 he rebuilt the New Cavendish Street premises and erected a factory in Chenies Mews behind University College Hospital. The business, W. Martindale, was acquired by Savory & Moore Ltd in 1933, following which the retail operation at New Cavendish Street continued to trade as W. Martindale until the mid-1970s. See http://www.histpharm.org/40ishpBerlin/P51P.pdf.

1813. Two single manuscript letters on watermarked paper, neatly written in brown ink in two separate hands, and with further additional signatures; paper little browned and dust-soiled, with some minor ink spotting, and each sheet with two or three small paper flaws. Two nice early 19th century documents relating to chimney sweeping. The first, dated Purfleet June 16th, 1813, is a copy of a report by John Davies and addressed to Captain Godfrey Esq, Storekeeper. ‘Gentlemen, You will give directions for the chimney shaft attached to Taylors shed to be enlarged as there is a check by the roof so as to prevent the Boy or a wiff of straw to go up or down which was the occasion the chimney being on fire’. The accompanying letter of instruction dated ‘Office of Ordnance, Purfleet 21st June 1813’, is addressed to Major Birch ‘Coms. Rl. Engineer’. ‘Sir, We beg to transmit to you the enclosed copy of a report made to us by John Davies employed to Sweep the Ordnance Chimnies at this place, and as the chimney of the shed therein mentioned has been on fire twice, we have to request that you will be pleased to give directions for the same to be enlarged as as to admit of its being properly swept’. This has been signed by John Godfrey, Sam[uel] Prynn and Francis Pallatte. Prynn was Clerk of the Survey, and Pellate Clerk of the Cheque. As one of the gunpowder magazines of the Office of Ordnance, the prevention of fire at Purfleet must surely have been a matter of some urgency!

1903. 8vo, 251, [1]; with seventeen halftone photographs (all but four full page) and two maps; very small rust mark at gutter of title-page, with some light soiling and marginal browning; First edition of this fervent account by Mary E. Darley, ‘A Missionary in China of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society’ in which she reports on the activities and work of the mission, to lead souls ‘out of utter darkness into “His Marvellous Light”. Whilst inevitably focused upon the religious purpose of her stay in China, her account provides an insight into the role that women played in early 20th century missionary work, and in particular her work with local Chinese women and children, and the missions social and welfare work with lepers and the blind.

1879. 8vo, pp. 30, [2]; a little spotted and browned throughout, with some marginal soiling, final verso more prominently soiled, with a few small marginal nicks and tears; evidence of previous vertical fold throughout, small library date stamp at tail of title-page verso; First separate edition, of this short essay first read before the Leigh Literary Society, effectively a fund-raising appeal to raise funds to preserve and grow the collection, and providing a rare insight into an established provincial school library. ‘The collection of books, about six score in number, forming the Library of the Grammar School in Leigh - the only relic of this kind in Lancashire - is interesting, not only on account of the comparative rarity of the volumes, but also from the many local reminiscences which are centred in them as being once owned, according to the inscriptions in them, by the benefactors, the masters, or scholars of the school. The books are also of value because they present a view of the kind of literature that served two hundred years ago to form part of a schoolmaster’s library, and likewise the common schoolbooks of the boys’ (p. 5).
The earliest Grammar schools were founded in the 16th century with the specific aim of teaching and instructing the children of the poor. One of the earliest was Manchester Grammar school, established in 1519. The North-west of England, in particular, benefited from the spread of ‘new learning’, with Dr Thomas Linacre, physician to Henry VII and an associate and contemporary of Thomas More and Erasmus, helping to reform education practices in nearly Wigan - only a few miles from Leigh, and where the present Grammar School was founded towards the end of the 16th century, although the exact date is unknown.
As the present essay reveals, the school benefited from the gift of a number of book collections during the 17th century, with an emphasis upon Latin and Greek classical texts, and upon theology. One former master, Ralph Pilling, is identified as being a principle benefactor, and who was also responsible for the erection of the present schoolhouse. Very much a working collection, Bailey notes that the 120 mainly 8vo volumes are ‘more or less in a defective condition’ having been traced and scribbled upon, lacking covers, and generally ‘ill-used by the boys’.
He highlights a number of what he considers to be the high-spots, including a 1652 edition of Record’s arithmetic unknown to Professor de Morgan; a copy of the Colloquies of Corderius; a 1612 Venice printing of ‘the Enchiridon Methodicon of Nicephorous ... an interesting specimen of Greek printing’; an edition of ‘Ethics or Moral Discipline’ by Eustachius (1573-1640); and a 1645 Amsterdam edition of Erasmus’s De Copia Verborum ac Rerum.
No doubt the ‘gem of the collection’, however, is a copy of Melanchthons’ Proverbs of Solomon from 1525, and bearing the Episcopal signature of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, of Canterbury. How the copy ended up in ‘this obscure corner of England’ may never been ascertained, Bailey notes, but his books were dispersed when he was committed to the Tower by Queen Mary.
Bailey concludes is erudite essay with a plea to his audience, the Literary Society of Leigh, to honour the foundations laid by Ralph Pilling and to continue to ‘cultivate and disseminate a taste for reading and study - to enter into the spirit of his good deeds by rebuilding his old school, and by using what remains of his books to form the nucleus of a library for the schoolboys and for the town’ (p. 30). OCLC locates copies at Chicago, the New York Public Library, Manchester and the British Library.

1870s.]. 16mo, plain notebook, ff. 51 leaves of which 32 have been used, leaves neatly ruled in pencil to form a table of 12 spaces, and containing 615 mounted examples neatly clipped from contemporary note-paper and stationery in various colours, some printed and some embossed, and neatly organised into groups, under florid manuscript headings; some leaves possibly excised; light marginal soiling and foxing throughout, otherwise clean and crisp; Quite an extensive and well-organised Victorian collection of arms, crests, monograms, flags, and pictograms, neatly clipped from contemporary stationery and mounted into an attractive bound volume. The anonymous compiler has divided them into groups, under florid ink manuscript headings: Arms of All Nations; Royal Arms; Archbishops 1070-1862; Dukes; Marquesses; the University of Oxford; the University of Cambridge; Army; Navy; Arms of Scottish Clans; and The Arms of the English Counties. Other untitled sections include a number of ensigns; the livery companies of London; other military regiments; and a further section of Oxbridge colleges. One of the blank leaves has a faint pencil heading ‘Counties’, though remains unused.
Whilst somewhat forgotten and overlooked today, during the Victorian era the collecting of arms, crests and monograms was a popular pastime, and indeed a number of leading publishing firms such as Marcus Ward & Co.; Stafford Smith & Co., William Lincoln (subsequently William Simpson Lincoln), and Stanley Gibbons & Co., produced dedicated crest albums to house Crested stationary made its appearance in England after the introduction of uniform penny postage in 1840, thus creating, in addition to waxed seals, two additional collectibles - postage stamps and crests embossed and printed on envelope flaps. These were soon to be found also on letterheads of gentlemen’s clubs, hotels, civic authorities, and commercial stationary. The earliest crest albums date from around 1862, and at the time sets of crests were also produced for collectors. The pastime appears to have been firmly centred upon the United Kingdom, although also found popularity in France and America. The hobby continued into the twentieth century, though appears to have more or less ceased with the First World War.

1845. 4to, pp. [ii] title-page, 329 - 398; with eight lithograph plates; somewhat browned and foxed throughout (including to some of the plates), with some dampstaining to lower margins, upper margins and fore-edges of final two leaves with later tape repairs, title-page and final leaf gutters repaired, with a number of further gutters strengthened; Offprint. An important, detailed, and well illustrated study on the pathology of cretinism, one of a number of works published on the subject during the first half of the nineteenth century. The noted psychiatrist Friedrich Karl Stahl (1811-1873) began his work in 1837 in Sulzheim near Schweinfurt, a region in which endemic cretinism was observed. This prompted him to undertake extensive studies on the disease, the results of which were first presented to the Academy in March 1843, and were then published in the Nova Acta Academiae in 1845. It gained him membership of the German Academy of Natural Sciences in 1844, with Stahl subsequently granted a generous travel grant by Ludwig II in 1846, allowing him to continue his research outside of Bavaria. He visited Vienna, Prague, Wurrtemberg, Salzburg, Styria and Switzerland, with the results of his further studies published in 1848 as Neue Beitrage zur Physiognomik und pathologischen Anatomie der Idiotia edemica. Stahl’s work and his references to individual suture growths occurring in the skulls of patients, subsequently influenced Rudolf Virchow’s doctrine of the developmental history of Cretinism and the skulls.
The eight lithographs by Henry & Cohen of Bonn are particularly striking - notably the four depicting specific case histories. Hirsch V, p. 503.

1901. 8vo, pp. xvi. 727, [1] blank, [4] advertisements; with a number of engravings and diagrams within the text; lightly browned throughout, with some occasional soiling and staining; one or two contemporary pencil calculations within margins; final advertisement leaf soiled and creased, and with tear at upper margin of final free endpaper with small loss; Uncommon second edition (first 1896) of this detailed and extensive text book, one of a series of works issued by James Cusack, and providing an insight into the provision of mathematical education at the turn of the century.
‘The present work is not intended as a first book on Arithmetic; it is intended for students already acquainted with methods, but who look for a rational explanation of those methods, and of the principles underlying them ... Throughout the work I have kept constantly before me the needs of the large number of young students scattered over the rural districts, who have little or no opportunity for receiving oral instruction in this important subject. Should any such student find any of my explanations insufficient, on receipt of a letter to that effect I shall be pleased to send whatever further explanation may be necessary’ (preface).
S. Blows in his 1890 ‘Cusack’s Principles of Logic, prepared expressly to meet the requirements of the syllabus for certificate students’ (second edition), describes Cusack as a London Professor, and we believe that for some time he ran a private school in the city. Indeed the preface is signed by Cusack at ‘Day Training College, Moorfields, London, E.C.’ He produced a series of textbooks, all published by the City of London Book Depot, together with a number of boxed education kits, to be used in conjunction with the accompanying text-book. He appears to have worked in collaboration with not only S. Blows, but with Henry Armstrong, who penned ‘Cusack’s Solid Geometry’, which was to be used alongside his ‘Geometrikon’ boxed set.
Other sets were produced to aid the teaching of drawing and shading models, with OCLC locating later 20th century publications on topics such as double-entry bookkeeping, (1911) and ‘the arithmetic of the decimal system’ (1920). OCLC locates copies of this second edition at the BL and Leicester only, with the first edition noted at Trinity College and the National Library of Scotland.

1920. Solid brass mould, inner plate 125 x 82mm, set within outer brass frame one side with two locking pins, the whole 160 x 93 x 25mm; signs of light wear and burnishing, though impressions barely warn and still clear and pronounced, upper surface with some abrasion; a heavy item weighing 2.5kg. Original brass mould with 42 impressions for incisor and canine teeth - seemingly for both both primary and secondary teeth. Sadly the manufacturer is anonymous, though we believe it to be English. The only identifying feature is the number 5, indicating this to be one of a series of similar plates.
The history of dentures and artificial teeth dates back to the Etruscans, and were traditionally made of wood, ivory, and indeed human teeth - a practice which lasted well into the 19th century. The 18th century saw the development of porcelain artificial teeth and dentures, though these were prone to chip and could be ‘noisy’. The nineteenth century saw significant improvements, thanks largely to the work of S.S. White in the US, and Claudius Ash in London. Porcelain was replaced by Vulcanite, with the 20th century eventually seeing this replaced by acrylic resin and other plastics.
Brass moulds came into common use during the 19th century, and were considered preferable to plaster of Paris moulds, being more durable and producing more uniform and better teeth. As Paul Goddard noted in his classic work of 1844 ‘The Anatomy, Physiology and Pathology of the Human Teeth’, it was important to ensure that the ‘cavities in which the teeth are to be moulded, must be one-fifth larger than the tooth wanted, as the body shrinks in that proportion in baking’ (p. 162). The moulds would oiled and then filled with the prepared paste. ‘The cavities are not only to be filled, but a redundancy is left projecting, which is to be squeezed out by putting the back of the mould on and squeezing it in a vice’ (ibid).