Aristotle’s Works – Anonymous – c.1855 | Color Plates, Midwifery Manual

Aristotle’s Works: Containing the Master-piece was a manual covering midwifery and sexual practice falsely attributed to Aristotle. Medical guides of this variety were widely popular during the Victorian period despite the passing of the Obscene Publications Act in 1857, which made the sale of lewd material a statutory offence. Readers consulted these texts for basic instruction on marriage, childbirth, and disease prevention, though the remedies tend to be a mixture of medical science and superstition. Subjects range from birth defects and common pregnancy diseases to sexual conduct, physiognomy, and astrology. This illustrated edition was printed around 1855 in London.

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Aristotle’s Works: Containing the Master-piece, Directions for Midwives, and Counsel and Advice to Child-bearing Women, with Various Useful Remedies
• Author: Pseudo-Aristotle
• Publisher: London: [John Smith, Tooley Street]
• Edition: Circa 1855
• Binding: Original publisher’s brown cloth
• Format: Sextodecimo (16mo), single volume
• Size: ~ 5in x 3.25in (12.5 cm x 8.25 cm)
• Collation: viii, 9–352 pp
• Illustrations: Color frontispiece and color title page, 6 additional color plates, several in-text woodcuts
• Contents Include:
  • The Happy State of Matrimony
  • Diseases of Pregnant Women
  • Directions for Midwives
  • Of Unnatural Labor
  • The Vagaries of Nature in the birth of Monsters
  • Venereal Disease
  • Secrets relating to Physiognomy

Condition:

Good. Binding is solid, with minor fraying to corners and edges of the spine. Some rubbing to the cloth boards. Internally, the text block is secure. Mild to moderate foxing throughout, though mainly concentrated on the endpapers. Plates have kept their color.

Why Collect This?

• Pseudo-Aristotelian text mixing folk medicine and practical advice
• Illustrations of child development in utero and birth defects
• Victorian remedies for childbirth and disease

Item Number: #31090