Clowes, A Profitable and necessarie booke of observations, London, 1596, later calf

CLOWES, WILLIAM

A profitable and necessarie booke of observations, for all those that are burned with the flame of gun powder, &c., and also for curing of wounds made with musket and caliver shot, and other weapons of war commonly used at this day both by sea and land... London: Edmund Bollifant for Thomas Dawson, 1596

second edition, 4to (200 x 150mm.), 2 parts in one (with continuous pagination), 4 full-page woodcut illustrations, nineteenth-century calf, some staining or dampstaining, spine chipped at head, rubbed

The surgical writings by Clowes (c.1540-1604) were amongst the most significant of the Elizabethan age. Clowes had been a naval surgeon and accompanied the expedition of the Earl of Leicester in the Low Countries. He also wrote a work on venereal disease which is reprinted in this edition. There are informative woodcuts showing a surgery chest and surgical instruments that were in use at the time.

LITERATURE:

Cockle 56; ESTC S108096; STC 5445.5

PROVENANCE:

purchased from Pickering & Chatto, 9 December 1899, £4