Medical Botany: Containing Systematic and General Descriptions, with Plates of All the Medicinal Plants, Indigenous and Exotic, Comprehended in the Catalogues of the Materia Medica, as Published by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh : Accompanied with a Circumstantial Detail of Their Medicinal Effects, and of the Diseases in which They Have Been Most Successfully Employed : in Three Volumes, Volume 1

William Woodville

Jan 1790 · Printed and sold for the author, by James Phillips

About this ebook

William Woodville's Medical botany: containing systematic and general descriptions, with plates of all the medicinal plants, indigenous and exotic, comprehended in the catalogues of the materia medica, as published by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh, issued in London in 3 volumes and a supplement, remained the standard illustrated work on the British pharmacopoeia until the 1880s. Originally it appeared in fascicules. The 274 hand-colored plates in the first edition were the work of James Sowerby (1757-1822). Sowerby began his artistic career as an apprentice to Richard Wright, the marine painter. Later he taught drawing and painted portraits and miniatures before turning to landscape painting. Eventually his work came to the notice of William Curtis, the publisher of botanical works, who employed Sowerby as a botanical illustrator and instructed him in botany. A second edition of Woodville's work appeared in 1810, but the definitive edition appeared in 1832, expanded to five volumes edited by William Jackson Hooker.