Xi yi lue lun [= First Lines of the Practice of Surgery in the West]

Shanghai: Ren ji yi guan. Good with no dust jacket. 1857. First Edition. Flexible cloth. Tone, some soiling and light foxing, light dampstaining largely in margins, many folded leaves opened, original wraps enclosed in worn burlap wrapper with largely peeled suede covering. Solid sewn text in flexible cloth binding. ; First Lines of the Practice of Surgery in the West. First Western medical texts to be translated and printed in Chinese. Three volumes-in-one; includes over 400 illustrations. Not first issue, since lacks 8 page bilingual table of contents. Treatise written by British medical missionary Benjamin Hobson with substantial assistance by Maocai Guan in reinterpreting Hobson's Western medicine for Confucian readers. While I do not read Chinese, this copy contains the entire 384 text and illustration pages contained in the National Library of Medicine digital copy, NLM pages 369/370 are bound between pages 380/381; illustration page 210 has 3" tear, there are some additional blank pages bound with illustrations. Provenance: 1882 ownership inscription of Dr Horace R Smith, when briefly a medical missionary in China. Smith opened the American Presbyterian Medical Mission at Weixian, Shandong. 1916 gift inscription from Dr Smith to another medical colleague resident in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Quite uncommon and significant work in the transmission of Western surgical practice to Chinese practitioners. ; [113] double leaves in 1 case pages .