WISEMAN (Richard). Several Chirurgical Treatises. By Richard Wiseman, Serjeant-Chirurgeon.1686

London: Printed by R. Norton and J. Macock, for R. Royston, Second Edition, folio (330 x 190 mm),[16], 577, [15]pp., with half-title, short tear in outer blank margin of the dedication leaf to Charles II, worming on upper inner blank margins of the last 100pp. but not affecting the text at any point, with a divisional title-page for each treatise, lacks endpapers, contemporary calf, extremities rubbed, corners rubbed through to the boards, head and foot of spine chipped. The first edition of this work was published in 1676 and was republished unchanged for this second edition. "For each topic Wiseman examines the anatomy, pathology, etiology, diagnosis, prognosis and management, adding selected case histories or observations from his vast experience. These personal observations, some brief and some in extensive detail, concern 600 individual patients.... constitute a rich and unique historical record of surgical reality in seventeenth-century Britain and have yet to be analysed fully. In Europe only the 600 observations of Wilhelm Fabry of Hilden, published earlier in the century, are comparable..... The eight treatises concern ulcers, tumours, diseases of the anus, king's evil, wounds, gunshot wounds, fractures and luxations, and lues venerea (syphilis and gonorrhoea) respectively....[his] immense expertise in traumatic surgery is particularly evident in his account of gunshot wounds, including severe compound limb fractures.... Wiseman is our surgical Sydenham. He by his skill and personality helped to raise the whole status of surgery. He was the first of the great British surgeons."—(ODNB). Garrison & Morten, 4757; Norman, 2253; Krivatsy, 13084; Wing, W3108.