English Malady First Edition - George Cheyne - Bauman Rare Books

English Malady

George CHEYNE

Item#: 71427 We're sorry, this item has been sold

English Malady

A PIONEERING WORK IN PSYCHIATRY: CHEYNE’S ENGLISH MALADY, 1733, THE FIRST SIGNIFICANT BOOK ON NEUROSES

CHEYNE, George. The English Malady: or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all Kinds, as Spleen, Vapours, Lowness of Spirits, Hypochondriacal, and Hysterical Distempers, &c. London: G. Strahan and J. Leake, 1733. Octavo, period-style full speckled and paneled brown calf, raised bands, russet morocco spine label.

First edition of one of the most influential early books on what was to become the discipline of psychiatry.

“Cheyne’s term “English malady” refers to depression, the causes of which Cheyne listed as moist air, the variable English climate, too much meat and alcohol, sedentary habits and overcrowding. Among the clinical illustrations Cheyne included his own case, which he cured by purges, a milk and vegetable diet and the study of religious writings. Cheyne’s work inspired an interest in England in exploring the metaphysical relationship between mind and body” (Norman 471). Cheyne was a celebrated and popular young London physician, and this, his most enduring work, “was highly eulogized by Samuel Johnson, who had much reason to be a good judge of such a work” (DNB). “Like many authors on nervous diseases of the depressive kind, Cheyne wrote from personal experience… He described how difficult it was— as it still is— to explain the nature of their illness to patients and relatives, for ‘nervous distempers’ were even then ‘under some kind of disgrace and imputation” (Hunter & MacAlpine, 351). Garrison-Morton 4840. Osleriana 2304. Bibliotheca Walleriana 1950.

A fine, handsome copy.

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Aquatint Copperplate process by which the plate is “bitten” by exposure to acid. By changing the areas of the plate that are exposed and the length of time the plate is submerged in the acid bath, the engraver can obtain fine and varying shades of gray that closely resemble watercolor washes. Although the name contains the word “tint”, this is a black-and-white printing process; aquatint plates can often be hand colored, however.
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