?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 5,000 - $ 7,000
TURNER, MATTHEW. An Account of the Extraordinary Medicinal Fluid, called Aether. [4], 16 pages. 8vo, 194x124 mm, contemporary wrappers; contents faintly toned but clean. [Liverpool]: John Sadler, 1761
scarce first edition. Turner was a Liverpool surgeon, chemist, and freethinker. In this pamphlet he advocated the use of vitriolic ether, taken orally or inhaled through the nose, for the relief of a variety of complaints, including headache and other pain. "With this recommendation of the inhalation of ether for killing pain, Turner has a place in the pre-history of anesthesia" (Norman). Fulton & Stanton I.9 ("important but little-known tract"); Norman 2116 (both citing the second edition). ABPC and RBH record only the Norman copy of the second edition, sold first in 1998 and again in 2003.
