John Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem

[John Armstrong]

The Art of Preserving Health: A Poem. London, Printed: Philadelphia: Re-printed, and Sold by B. Franklin, M.DCC.XLV (1745)

John Armstrong (1709 to 1779), a Scottish-born physician, wrote The Art of Preserving Health as a poem in four books on air, diet, exercise and the passions. Andrew Millar published it in London in 1744. Franklin reprinted it the next year, and his is the first American edition. Armstrong belonged to the literary circle of Thomson, Smollett and Wilkes, and the poem was read in its day as a manual of hygiene in verse.

The copy is a quarto, 192 x 124 mm, and is complete: it keeps the four section titles, the woodcut ornament on the title page and the tailpieces (Miller, appendix B, nos. 19 and 21). The leaves are dampstained, and the title page carries an early ownership signature that has largely faded. It is bound in period-style full calf, blind ruled, with a maroon morocco label on the spine, and is housed in a dark blue slipcase and chemise.

ESTC records twelve copies in institutions. The most recent copy at auction was sold at Parke Bernet in 1941. Earlier copies came up at Henkels in 1932, 1921 and 1917.

REFERENCES

Miller 367; ESTC W872; Evans 5532; Hildeburn 913; Sabin 2023; R. B. Austin, Early American Medical Imprints 78; Lewis M. Knapp, "Dr. John Armstrong, Littérateur, and Associate of Smollett, Thomson, Wilkes, and Other Celebrities," PMLA 59, no. 4 (December 1944), pp. 1019 to 1058.

PROVENANCE

Early ownership signature on the title page, largely illegible.