Elements of Physiology translated from the Original Latin and interspersed with occasional notes by Charles Caldwell, to which is subjoined, by the translator, An Appendix, exhibiting a brief and compendious view of the existing discoveries relative to the Subject of Animal Electricity

Philadelphia: Thomas Dobson, 1795. 1st American.

1795 AN EARLY MONOGRAPH ON HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN BY PROMINENT AMERICAN PHYSICIAN.

8 1/2 inches tall hardcover, two volumes in one, full leather binding, spine with gilt red leather label, ink signature of William H. Selby in contemporary script and his hand stamp on front endpapers, Vol. I, xvi, 229 pp; Vol. II, 247 pp. Covers and spine rubbed, back cover bowed, corners worn, hinges cracked but secure, browning to pages, good in custom archival mylar cover.

JOHANN FRIEDRICH BLUMENBACH (1752 - 1840) was a German physician, naturalist, physiologist, and anthropologist. He was one of the first to explore the study of mankind as an aspect of natural history. His teachings in comparative anatomy were applied to the classification of what he called human races, of which he determined there to be five. Although the greatest part of Blumenbach's life was passed at Göttingen, in 1789 he visited Switzerland, and gave a curious medical topography of that country in the Bibliothek. He was in England in 1788 and 1792. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1794. In 1812 he was appointed secretary to the Royal Society of Sciences at Göttingen, in 1816 was appointed physician to the royal family in Hanover by the prince regent, and in 1831 was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences at Paris. In celebration of his doctoral jubilee (1825) traveling scholarships were founded to assist talented young physicians and naturalists. In 1813, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

CHARLES CALDWELL (1772 – 1853) was a noted 19th-century U.S. physician who is best known for starting what would become the University of Louisville School of Medicine and is one of the earliest proponents of Polygenism in the United States. Caldwell earned an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1796 while studying under Benjamin Rush.