• Title: An Analytical View of the Animal Economy
• Author: Isaac Ball
• Printed for the author by G. J. Hunt
• Estimated year of printing: 1808 

Notes:

Full title: An Analytical View of the Animal Economy Calculated for Students of Medicine as well as Private Gentlemen; Interspersed with many allegories and moral reflections drawn from the subject to awaken the mind to an elevated sense of the great author of nature

Hand-colored frontispiece

This book is about the human anatomy, but written in a very allegorical style meant to appeal to a wide audience.  The information is largely correct by today’s standards, with some exceptions — it goes into great detail about phlogiston, a combustible, fire-like substance once thought to be part of the air, which the author believed the lungs helped to remove from the air we breath.  In fact, the author uses this as a starting point to discuss spontaneous human combustion resulting from too much phlogiston remaining in the air.  

Despite being a science book, it is also interspersed with many references  to God and amazement that God could design such a complex anatomy.  Towards the end, the book transitions into more of a social commentary, focusing in particular on the evils of alcohol (which is said to contain phlogiston), declaring that people in early youth should only drink beer, saving wine and liquor to add cheerfulness to old age.

The author, Isaac Ball, was a physician and surgeon in New York.  In 1800 he wrote a memorial to the recently deceased George Washington, and later corresponded with then-president Thomas Jefferson, requesting that he be a patron of the second edition of this book. 

Books of this era were often sold by subscription, where buyers would pre-pay for a copy of the book prior to publication.  The nine page list of subscribers includes Stephen B. Munn (1766 – 1855), whose ownership signature is present on the front cover and also front endpaper.  Munn was a noted merchant in New York, starting out as a Connecticut farm boy but eventually becoming a wealthy New York City landowner.  

Historical context:

When this book was published in 1808, Thomas. Jefferson was President of the United States.  In this year, John Dalton first published his atomic theory of chemistry, which would go on to be considered one of the most important scientific concepts  One year earlier, Robert Fulton invented the steam boat.