OBSERVATIONS ON ABORTION
First US edition of this obstetrics treatise by the British surgeon and authority on midwifery — the earliest use of "abortion" in the title of an American medical imprint according to Austin.
Very good.
Price: $2,000.00
OBSERVATIONS ON ABORTION
"By abortion is generally understood the expulsion of the contents of the gravid uterus, at a period of gestation so early as to render it impossible for the foetus to live."
Prior to the mid-19th century, the legal status of abortion in the US was based on British common law, which typically marked the quickening (the point at which a pregnant person can feel fetal movement) as the barrier past which any purposeful "destruction" would be considered criminal (Mohr). Recipes for abortifacients weren't uncommon in early American herbals and household management guides, but the language describing their intended use was often somewhat ambiguous or focused more simply on regulating a woman's menses, as in Benjamin Franklin's 1748 textbook AMERICAN INSTRUCTOR, which printed an at-home recipe for "a common Complaint among unmarry'd Women, namely, the suppression of the courses."
While OBSERVATIONS largely employs the term abortion interchangeably with miscarriage (i.e. spontaneous abortion), Burns explicitly uses the word in reference to the deliberate termination of a pregnancy. Specifically, he disagrees with those who "pretend to view attempts to excite abortion as different from murder, upon the principle that the embryo is not possessed of life" and "can neither think nor act," as "upon the same reasoning, we should conclude it to be innocent to kill the child in the birth." He does, however, make exception for "those necessary attempts which are occasionally made to procure premature labour, or even abortion, when the safety of the mother demands this interference, or when we can thus give the child a chance of living, who otherwise would have none" (74-76).
OBSERVATIONS first appeared in London in 1806, with this first American edition "apparently" based on the revised 1807 London edition (Austin); all appear uncommon in the trade. A notable signpost in the public discourse around abortion in the US.
Read more: Austin, Early American Medical Imprints, 1668-1820, 358; Shaw & Shoemaker, American Bibliography, 8.14622; Mohr, Abortion in Amercia, 1979; John Burns, Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900, Vol. 7; Farrell, "Ben Franklin Put an Abortion Recipe in His Math Textbook," Slate, May 2022; Phillips, "Abortion in Colonial America," UConn Today, August 2022.
The Object
Troy, NY: Wright, Goodenow, and Stockwell, 1808. Full title: Observations on abortion: containing an account of the manner in which it takes place, the causes which produce it, and the method of preventing or treating it. 6.25'' x 4''. Full contemporary brown calf, brown goatskin spine label, gilt-tooled spine. [2], 151, [1] pages. Boards slightly bowed, moderate wear to edges and extremities, small nick to spine. Contemporary ownership markings in ink to front free endpaper and slightly later bookplate to early blank. Toning and foxing to endpapers, scattered foxing throughout, two penultimate leaves trimmed unevenly (not affecting text). Sound.
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