[Americanisches Noth-und Hülfs-Buchlein, Enthaltend Hausmittel und Recepte für allerley Krankheiten und Zufälle des Menschen und Vieh. Hauptsächlich aus den hinterlassenen Manuscripten eines zu seine Zeit berühmt gewesenen Arztes in Virginia gezogen]

[Osnaburg, Stark County, Ohio]: [Heinrich Kurtz], [1837]. First Edition.. Original muslin backed marbled paper over boards.. Very good; some spotting. 8vo, 57, [3 - index] pp. The book is signed with numbers and bound in fours with an inserted bifolium in each signature signed with the number and an asterisk. Thus there are 6 leaves in each of the five signatures. The paper is not watermarked.

A most unusual manual of folk remedies and herbal compounds that contains 470 numbered paragraphs of succinct medical formulae, cures and advice for man and animals. The copy offered here is without the title page that bears the Kurtz imprint. The listed title is taken from the copy at the NLM (http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/8308472). At some point close to the publication date the title page was omitted or cancelled. After inspection of the title page in another copy it is worth noting that it was printed from an engraved plate and inserted. Kurtz may have run out of copies to insert. So what appears in the text is the truncated drop-title at the head of the text on page 1, thus omitting the imprint and title reference to the manuscripts of the famous Virginia physician that are, as Kurtz claimed, the basis for the text. The copy offered here is bound in a contemporary cloth backed boards. A coarse type of muslin was used as the backing and is the same on the three copies that have come into our possession. The bindings are identical on all the copies (the pattern and color of the marbled paper are the same on two copies with the third having a color variant in the marbling). The books derive from one source, and appear to have been bound in this manner so that they could be offered while masking the printer and the origin. The book is unlike anything Kurtz printed during his career (see Durnbaugh, "Henry Kurtz, Man of the Book" in Ohio History, v. 76, #3, 1967) - i.e., religious periodicals, hymnals, ABCs.