Consisting of Twelve Plates from Drawings Engraved on
Stone, and Coloured by Mr. J. Perry, and Two Copper-plates
from the Philosophical Transactions, Coloured by the Same
Artist. the Whole Representing Forty-five Specimens of
Aborted Ova and Adventitious Productions of the Uterus,
With Preliminary Observations, Explanations of the Figures
and Remarks, Anatomical and Physiological.


I submit to my professional friends and acquaintances, as well as to all those medical brethren who take an interest in the progressive advancement of the sciences they cultivate, a series of beautifully executed Drawings of anatomical preparations, intended to explain and illustrate the important subjects of “Abortion”, and “The Diseases incidental to Menstruation”; subjects in which all classes of the medical profession, whether specifically devoted or not to obstetrical practice, are equally interested. The drawings speak for themselves. The Artist, under my immediate and constant superintendence, and with the anatomical preparations in every case before him, explained and demonstrated to him, has, in the course of six years, been able to produce twelve plates, containing upwards of forty anatomical figures, lithographed and coloured by himself, which reflect no small honour on the arts of this country, and are highly creditable to his abilities. These plates, I will venture to say, leave nothing to be desired in such a mode of representing anatomical subjects, (a mode which appears from the present endeavours to be the best calculated of any for that purpose,) whilst they remove every cause of regret, hitherto entertained, that the most successful efforts of anatomical lithographic representation, of which foreign countries can boast, had never yet been equalled in England. It may now be asserted that those efforts have been triumphantly rivalled by Mr. Joseph Perry on the present occasion; and, in some of the plates, unquestionably surpassed.

Having said thus much in favour of the Artist, I hope I shall be excused if I add, for myself, that I have selected such specimens only as I considered likely to illustrate some of the most interesting points of the physiology of human generation, and which might assist in unravelling the various practical difficulties which beset that mysterious question;—that I have chosen those which, I believe, (with the exception of one or two preparations,) have never been published before either in this or any other country, and many of which are to be found only in some private anatomical collection;—that I have explained them in such a way as to render their meaning and usefulness evident to all my brethren;—and that, under such circumstances, I venture to believe that the plates so explained will prove of no inconsiderable service to every medical practitioner as a work of reference, where either a private or a public museum is not at hand to solve cases of doubt.