[AMERICAN FOLK MEDINE, 1867]. Dr Chase's Recipes; or, Information For Everybody: An Invaluable Collection of about Eight Hundred Practical Recipes

Ann Arbor: Published by the author, 1867. 'Forty-Fifth Edition" / "Three Hundred and Fourth Thousand. Very good. 8vo. [2], xxix, [2], 34-384 pp. Illustrated with a portrait of the author and numerous in-text woodcuts and diagrams throughout. Original publisher's morocco binding gilt extra, at the corners of both covers are medicine bottles labeled "Alternative," "Bitters," "Syrup," and "Cough," smooth spine gilt. Extremities lightly rubbed, inherent foxing and browning to text as is true in all copies. EXCELLENT COPY IN ORIGINAL PUBLISHER'S GILT MOROCCO, SCARCE IN GOOD UNSOPHISTICATED CONDITION, AS HERE.

"Immensely popular in the nineteenth-century, Dr. Chase's Recipes [...] went through dozens of editions and was believed to have sold over four million copies (second only to the Bible in total sales). This book was a vital reference to young Americans, particularly homesteaders, who depended upon it for information on health, diet, cooking, animal husbandry, household hints, and general how-to's. Containing recipes for both food and household products, delivered in a warm, chatty tone, this book was, and still is, a comprehensive source of information that deserves to be read and remembered." (SOURCE: Applewood Books).

Dr. Chase's own title-page is instructive, and "briefly" presents the extraordinarily broad array of topics herein: "an invaluable collection of about eight hundred practical recipes, for merchants, grocers, saloon-keepers, physicians, druggists, tanners, shoe makers, harness makers, painters, jewlers, blacksmiths, tinners, gunsmiths, farriers, barbers, bakers, dyers, renovaters, farmers, and families generally: to which have been added A rational treatment of pleurisy, inflammation of the lungs, and other inflammatory diseases, and also for general female debility and irregularities: all arranged in their appropriate departments."

CATALOGUER'S NOTE: The bibliographic complexities of this self-published book have not been satisfactorily explained, specifically pp. [xxix]-33. Our copy collates as per the 1870 edition digitized by Applewood Books, with the exception that p. [xxx] of the latter has an advertisement for The Courier Steam Printing-Press, whereas in our copy this page is blank. Similarly, the copy of the 1866 "30th edition" in the National Library of Medicine has additional text of "Opinions of the People" on pp. xxx-xxxi, and p. [xxx] features the very diagram of a horse which in our copy appears opposite the title-page. In the 1864 "Forty 3d Thousand" copy at MSU, the text of "Opinions of the People" continues onto p. xxxii and there is no diagram of the horse.

Provenance: Ruby H. Farrell (her pencilled inscription on second blank leaf).