Physical Features
Current Condition
Anatomical Tables of the Human Body is printed as an octavo. These photographs indicate the relatively well-kept condition of the book. However, there are brown spots and small tears on the page edges due to aging. Given that the Tisch Special Collections opened in 1996, this book would have been transported from a previous location. The C-4 stamp indicates its former location in Wessell Library (1965-1996). That this book was donated to Tufts in 1858 suggets it could have initially been kept in the Eaton Memorial Library, which opened in 1908, or in Ballou Hall's "College Building," which was the first library at Tufts. (Sauer et al. 2000)
Copper Engravings
The most notable aspects of Cheselden's book are the detailed diagrams. They were printed with copper plates, which was a more expensive method of printing illustrations compared to using wooden blocks. (Kusakawa 2012, 37) The photo above shows an outline of the plate used on one of the pages. According to Chris Barbour, the quality of paper by the end of the 18th century still could not rival that used for earlier printed books. These texts were printed with paper used for reproducing manuscripts. The second photo found above shows, accordingly, how ink from one of the diagrams has left an imprint on an adjacent page. Thus, there are many blank pages inserted to separate the illustrations.