David Mason Fine and Rare Books

Charles BELL. The Hand, its Mechanism and Vital Endowments, as Evincing Design.
Philadelphia: Carey, Lea, Blanchard, 1835. A New Edition. The Bridgewater Treatises Series, Treatise IV. Small 8vo., orig. cloth with a printed paper spine label, xii, (2), 15-213 pp. Features various anatomical illustrations of animal and human physiology in-text. Light foxing, some passages marked in pencil to margins, spine and outer edges sunned. Slight bruising at spine-ends and corners, otherwise a better than very good but not quite near fine copy in a grey slipcase.

Not in Garrison & Morton. Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842) was a Scottish surgeon and philosophical theologian. Bell discusses the Comparative Anatomy of the Hand, its Muscles in the Hand and Arm, Sensibility and Touch, and other observations. Bell notes that “in the mechanical construction of animals, as in their endowments of life, they are created in relation to the whole, planned together and fashioned by one mind.” In his article on Industrial accidents & Sir Charles Bell's treatise on the human hand, Peter J. Capuano writes that “The Hand taps into the same religiosity that made Victor Frankenstein's attempt at handmade human creation so “supremely frightful” in Shelley's 1831 introduction” [Capuano, Peter J. The Victorian Web].