Graphic illustrations of abortion and the diseases of menstruation / Consisting of twelve plates from drawings engraved on stone, and coloured by Mr. J. Perry, and two copper-plates from the Philosophical transactions coloured by the same artist : the whole representing forty-five specimens of aborted ova and adventitious productions of the uterus : with preliminary observations, explanations of the figures, and remarks, anatomical and physiological. By A. B. Granville.

Granville, A. B. (Augustus Bozzi), 1783-1872.

Date:: 1833

Credit: Graphic illustrations of abortion and the diseases of menstruation / Consisting of twelve plates from drawings engraved on stone, and coloured by Mr. J. Perry, and two copper-plates from the Philosophical transactions coloured by the same artist : the whole representing forty-five specimens of aborted ova and adventitious productions of the uterus : with preliminary observations, explanations of the figures, and remarks, anatomical and physiological. By A. B. Granville. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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exception of one or two preparations,) have never been published before either in this or any other country, and many of which are to he found only in some private anatomical collection ;-—that I have explained them in such a way as to render their meaning and usefulness evident to all my brethren ;—and that, under such circum- stances, I venture to believe that the plates so explained will prove of no inconsider- able service to every medical practitioner as a work of reference, where either a private or a public museum is not at hand to solve cases of doubt. I am aware that I might have extended this series of representations to more than double the present number of analogous preparations ; but I purposely limited it to what it is, from a consciousness that any unnecessary increase in the number of plates, which the peculiarity of the subject did not absolutely require, would only tend to increase the bulk, and with it the expense of the “ Graphic Illustrations ”, without any adequate or corresponding advantage. It may, after all, be asked : were these delineations wanted ? Were there not already in existence works of a similar, or at least analogous character, executed in an equally masterly style, to which the medical reader and the physiologist could refer for information and in cases of doubt ? I reply, yes, to the first— and negatively, to the second question. And first, of the second question. Not to speak of the many authors on matters of this description, who preceded Dr. Hunter and Professor Soemmering, in giving representations of the human embryo in many of its metamorphoses, such as Ruysch, Noortwyk, Albinus, Krapft, Wrisberg, Camper, Blumenbach, Denman, and others, I am ready to admit that both Hunter and Soemmering had given to the world delineations, such as are here referred to, which ought to satisfy the medical profession. The one in his splendid work on the “ Gravid Uterus ”, gigantic folio edition— the other in his no less valuable folio plates of the human embryo. But, unfortunately, neither of those works can be considered as accessible to the gene- rality of professional readers, on account of their high price and rarity ; and even if either were accessible, the subjects therein treated are viewed differently from those collected in the present work. Those works, moreover, present no coloured specimen of delineations of parts, most of which, if not all, from that simple circum- stance, lose their principal value;—and as productions of art they are not equal to what Mr. Perry has enabled me to offer to the public. Soemmering himself, in his “ leones Emhryonum Hnmanornm ”, admits, that although those who had gone before him in the same channel of inquiry, had produced valuable works and splendid plates, particularly Dr. Hunter and Dr. Denman; there was yet room for a more complete, and, above all, for a more minute representation of the

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