[Rarebooks] fa: SAMUEL GARTH - THE DISPENSARY - 1699 (Satire on Medicine)

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other 17th- & 18th-century titles, auctions  
ending Sunday, June 5. More details and images can be found at the URL  
below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://shop.ebay.com/arch_in_la/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Many thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

[Samuel Garth:] The Dispensary: A Poem. In Six Canto’s. London:  
Printed and sold by John Nutt near Stationers-Hall, 1699. The second  
edition (same year as the first), corrected by the author. Modern half- 
leather and marbled boards with gilt-stamped spine label; 8vo; [22] +  
94 pp.; engraved frontispiece. ESTC R6737; Wing G274.
Mild toning to the leaves and offsetting from the frontispiece, four  
leaves with an ink stain to the fore-edge margin not affecting any  
text, one leaf with short edge-tear to top margin, mild damp-staining  
to several leaves; otherwise clean and sound in a handsome, sharp  
modern half-calf binding. Contemporary ink inscription on verso of the  
frontispiece: "Katherine Blount / Given me by my Cousin H. Blount /  
May ye 27, 1699." Presumably it was Miss Blount who wrote out the  
"key" to the identities of the people alluded to in the poem on the  
front endpaper (somewhat stained) and who neatly filled in many of the  
blank names in the text itself.

A satirical burlesque recounting the efforts of the Royal College of  
Physicians to establish a dispensary for the poor of London "against  
the determined opposition of the apothecaries, who refused to supply  
medicines cheaply, though the physicians gave their services free. All  
the leading men on both sides appear in the poem ... and fight an epic  
but indecisive battle" (Kurnitz & Haycraft). The frontispiece, by  
Vander Gucht, shows the College's Cutlerian Theatre, designed by  
Robert Hooke. Samuel Garth (1661-1719) was a physician as well as a  
poet, a fellow of the Royal College and, after the accession of George  
I, physician-in-ordinary to the king. He was also a member of the  
legendary Kit Kat Club and a close friend of Addison, Steele and their  
circle. The Dispensary was his best and most popular literary  
achievement, going through ten editions.