Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts

Wood Engraving and the Illustration
of American Surgical Texts during
the Nineteenth Century
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
Abstract. Wood engraving as a medium of book illustration emerged at the .
end of the eighteenth century. In spite of its immediate technical and economic
advantages to publishers of medical and surgical books, engraving on metal
continued to dominate book illustration until the fourth decade of the nineteenth century. This study examines the two phenomena principally responsible
for propelling wood engraving to the forefront of surgical book illustration, i.e.,
the emergence of the mass-circulation illustrated periodical, and the use of wood
engraving in the illustration of British surgical texts post-1840, the source of most
surgical literature published in the United States until the 1860s.This study also
examines the use of wood engraving in surgical book illustration after the universal acceptance of the medium by American publishers.
l
R6sum6. C'est h la fin du XVIIIe siecle que la gravure sur bois est apparue en
tant que methode d'illustration de livres. Malgre les avantages techniques et
economiques immediats que la methode offrait aux editeurs d'ouvrages medicaux et chirurgicaux, la majorite des illustrations a continue d'employer la gravure en taille douce jusqu'h la quatrieme decennie du XIXe siecle. Cette etude
traite des deux ph6nomenes principalement responsables de la propulsion de
la gravure sur bois au range de premiere methode d'illustration d'ouvrages de
chirurgie : toud d'abord, l'emergence de revues periodiques illustrees h grande
circulation, puis l'utilisation de la gravure sur bois pour illustrer les textes
chirurgicaux britanniques posterieurs h 1840, source de la plupart des ouvrages
chirurgicaux publies aux Etats-Unis jusqu'aux annees 1860. Cette etude examine aussi l'utilisation de la gravure sur bois dans les illustrations des livres de
chirurgie apres que la methode fut universellement acceptbe par les editeurs
amhricains.
Illustration always has complicated book production and added substantially to its cost. Despite this, illustration has played a consistent di&istopher ~oolihan,Edward G . Miner Library, 601 Elmwood Avenue, Rochester, N.Y.,
14642USA.
CBMH/BCHM / Vdume 15: 1998 / p. 351-78
352
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
dactic role in surgical texts, more so than in any medical specialty with
the possible exception of anatomy. The depiction of surgical anatomy,
operative procedures, the reduction of fractures, and dislocations, bandaging, and instruments has been a feature of manuscript or printed
texts in every era of surgical publishing, and never more so than in the
century on which this essay focuses. The importance of illustration to
nineteenth-century surgical texts is evidenced in the following comparison. Between 1800 and 1809, 71% of medical texts published in the
United States were not illustrated. In surgical texts published during
this same decade, 94% contain illustration (Table 1).
Table 1
The Use of All Graphic Media in the Illustration
of American SurgicalTexts, 1800-99
Not illustrated
(W
CO per-
%
?$
Steelengraving
V.)
Note: This table is based on a survey of surgical books in the collections of the College of
Physicians of Philadelphia, the Edward G. Miner Library, University of Rochester
Medical Center, and the Robert L. Brown History of Medicine Collection, Health
Sciences Library, StateUniversityof New York at Buffalo.
l
This essay comprises three parts. The first examines wood engraving's tentative beginnings as a graphic technology at the end of the
eighteenth century, and the factors that led to its dominance of American medical and surgical illustration by 1850. It considers the technological, economic and cultural factors that initially hindered but ultimately
assured wood engraving's dominant role in the illustration of American medical books and journals post-1840. The second part studies the
use of wood engraving in surgical texts after its general acceptance by
American publishers, and trends in wood-engraved surgical illustration post-1840. The third part considers the sudden decline of printers'
use of wood engraving following the introduction of photochemical relief plates in the century's final decade. This essay is less concerned with
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
353
the nature of the visual information transmitted by wood-engraved images in nineteenth-century surgical texts than it is with the development of the medium by which they were printed.
EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY BOOK ILLUSTRATIONTECHNOLOGIES
I
Robert Austin's classic bibliography Early American Medical Imprints,
1668-1820 contains 2,106 entries representing a nearly inclusive list of
medical publishing in the 13 colonies and the United States over a period of 153 years. Francesco Cordasco's American Medical Imprints,
1820-1910 includes over 36,000 entries, representing perhaps 70% of the
volume of medical publishing in the United States over the next eight
decades. The remarkable growth of American medical publishing evidenced in these two bibliographies reflects its transformation from a
trade dominated at the turn of the nineteenth century by craftsmen, to
an industry that within several decades was characterized by rapidly
expanding markets, increased competition, and constant technological
change. After 1825 American publishing emerged from the hand-press
period that had dominated book production for 350 years, and entered
the age of machine-pressesand mass-production.
This transformation of American publishing affected every facet of
book production, including illustration. The first three decades of the
nineteenth century witnessed increases in the number of medical books
published, the number of illustrations these titles might contain, and
the number of technologies available to publishers for book illustration.
For most of the century, these options were realistically limited to three
graphic media: intaglio prints from engraved metal plates,' relief prints
from wood blocks or metal plates, and planographic prints from lithographic stones2Each medium had its advantages and disadvantages in
terms of the quality of image produced and the economics of production.
Copper-plate engraving dominated American medical book illustration through the 1820s. By the end of that decade, however, publishers
had become acutely aware of the need to increase productivity and reduce costs in an increasingly competitive environment. The least of the
problems that metal engraving presented to the book trade was the considerable time required for engraving. More critical was the necessity of
separately printing intaglio plates and relief type on different kinds of
presses using different paper stocks. Finally, the number of good impressions that could be pulled from an engraved plate was eventually
insufficientto meet the demand for increased press runs. Wood engraving provided publishers a graphic technology that resolved each of
these problems, though these advantages seem not to have convinced
most American publishers before 1830.
354
'
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
Wood engraving is a relief process, i.e., the design to be printed is left
in relief on the surface of the block, while white lines and spaces intended to be blank are cut away. Wood engraving differs from the traditional woodcut or woodblock print with which it is often confused in
that the former makes use of hard boxwoods, whereas the latter was cut
from soft woods. The blocks used in wood engraving were sawn and
engraved against the grain, using a tool similar to the burin employed
in metal engraving. The planks or blocks used for woodcuts were sawn
along the grain and cut using a U-or V-shaped knife. Because the trunks
of boxwoods such as apple, cherry, holly or sycamore are comparatively small in diameter, the end-grain blocks cut from these trees were
seldom more than five or six inches in diameter. The size of a woodblock print, on the other hand, was limited only by the capacity of the
press on which it was to be printed.
The end-grain boxwood blocks from which wood engravings were
printed were cut "type-high (about 24 mm), roughly the height of type
pieces of the period. In the hand-press and early machine-pressperiods,
these "type-high blocks were locked in the sameforme with type-pages
so that type and illustration(s) could be printed simultaneously, realizing significant savings to publishers in production time and costs. The
hardness of the boxwoods used for wood engraving also made it an
ideal printing surface for the increased press runs of the nineteenth century. Tens of thousands of good impressions could be printed from a
single block, in contrast to the thousand or more prints that could be
pulled from an engraved metal plate without loss of quality or the need
for re-engraving.
Wood engraving emerged toward the end of the eighteenth century,
though few examples can be dated with certainty before 1790. It was
employed occasionally for the illustration of inexpensive books and
tracts, but more often in the printing of handbills, trade cards and advertisement~.~
Credit for transforming what at the end of the century
was still a crude and undervalued graphic technique belongs to the
English engraver and naturalist Thomas Bewick (1753-1828).The publication of Bewick's A General History of Quadrupeds at Newcastle in 1790,
illustrated with 200 wood-engraved figures and 103 decorative pieces,
marks the advent of wood engraving as a serious graphic art and medium of book ill~stration.~
In the United States Bewick's earliest and
most influential disciple was Alexander Anderson (1775-1870).Trained
as a physician (MD, Columbia College, 1796), Anderson abandoned
medicine to pursue a long and productive career in engraving and book
illustration?
.
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
355
EARLY EXPERIMENTSIN WOOD-ENGRAVED SURGICAL ILLUSTRATION
I
Anderson's role in the history of wood engraving in America has long
been recognized. His contribution to the early wood-engraved illustration of medical books, however, has only recently been ~ n d e r s t o o d . ~
Anderson's pioneer work in this area is the illustration of three books issued by the New York publishing firm of Collins and Perkins in the first
decade of the nineteenth century.7 In 1807 Collins and Perkins issued
the first of their five editions of A Compendium of the Theory and Practice
of Midwifery by Samuel Bard (1742-1821), the first textbook on obstetrics
by an American author. It was illustrated with 19 wood engravings
copied by Anderson from copper-plate engravings in the works of Wdliam Smellie, Benjamin Bell and Alexander Hamilton. The Compendium
was the first American medical text whose entire illustration was executed on wood.8 It was followed in 1809 by Collins and Perkins' publication of John Bell's (1763-1820) Anatomy of the Human Body, the first
American edition of a work that had already appeared in three London
editions. Anderson (possibly with the assistance of apprentices) executed 80 engravings on wood for this text that reproduce the in-text
copperplate engravings of the original. With the London editions still
available on the American market, the publishers' motivation for employing wood engraving on such an extensive scale was obviously to
reduce the cost of reproducing the book's many engraved illustrations,
and thus to keep its pricing competitive?
Collins and Perkins' final effort among their early and remarkable experiments in wood-engraved book illustration was their 1810 abridged
edition of John Bell's The Principles of Surgery. This was the first surgical
work published in the United States to be illustrated with wood engravings. Though the text is accompanied by seven leaves of separately
printed copper-plate engravings, it includes 24 wood engravings in the
text, engraved by Alexander Anderson.lo
The use of wood engraving by Collins and Perkins might be characterized as one publisher's attempt to resolve economic and technical
problems in book illustration at a time when the disadvantages of metal
engraving were just becoming apparent. Other publishers also experimented with the wood-engraved illustration of surgical books. In 1811
the Philadelphia publisher Thomas Dobson issued an American edition
of J. F. D. Jones' A Treatise on the Process Employed by Nature in Suppressing the Hemorrhage from Divided and Punctured Arteries. Dobson, who
normally employed copper-plate engraving in the illustration of his
long list of publications, chose to copy the intaglio plates of the 1805
London edition with wood-engraved facsimiles. The wood engraver
William Mason, who had moved to Philadelphia from New York the
previous year, was commissioned to engrave the book's 15 plates on
356
CHRlSTOPHER HOOLIHAN
wood. Dobson apparently failed to comprehend the new medium's
principal technical advantage, i.e., relief blocks can be printed simultaneously with type. He printed his wood engravings as separate plates,
and had them bound into the text. The wood engravings were even
printed on the heavier paper stock often used for metal engraving.
Sketch explaining ths Fascia of an Artery.
Sketch explaining the Fascia of an Artery, in JohnBell, The Principles of
Surgery (New York, 1810), p. 59. Wood engraving by Alexander
Anderson. Compare the level of detail and clarity of the
wood-engraved image with the metal engraving from
which it was copied (Figure2).
l
More successful in its realization of wood engraving's advantages to
book production was the first American edition of Charles Bell's
(1774-1842)A System of Operative Surgery, published at Hartford in 1812
by Hale and Hosmer. Its two volumes are illustrated with 99 wood engravings, including seven of its 19 separately printed plates. Even more
remarkable in its use of wood engraving than Collins and Perkins' introduction of the medium to surgical illustration two years earlier, the
System was the most ambitious employment of wood engraving in an
American medical text before the medium's widespread acceptance in
the 1830s.11
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
357
Figure 2
Sketch explaining the Fascia of an Artery, in John Bell, The Principles of Surgery
(Edinburgh, 1801),vol. 1, p. 319. Copperplate engraving by John Bell.
I
However successful these early experiments in wood-engraved illustration seem in retrospect, their collective impact was modest at best.
Ninety-four percent of the surgicalbooks published in the United States
between 1800 and 1809 had been illustrated with copper-plate engraving. In the following decade, the use of metal engraving fell to 49% of
the illustration in American surgical texts. Wood engraving appeared in
27% of these books, largely due to the experimentation described in part
above. During the 1820s, the use of metal engraving further declined to
42% of surgical texts; but so did the use of wood engraving (15%), indicating that the experiments of the previous decade had not entirely convinced medical publishers of the medium's viability.I2 We can only
speculate why a graphic technology that was so eminently compatible
with existing printing technologies and that offered greater efficiencies
in book illustration took several decades to be generally accepted. Perhaps the shabby reputation long associated with relief processes still
dogged wood engraving in the early decades of the nineteenth century?
Part of the reason must certainly lie in publishers' satisfaction with the
quality and quantity of the images produced by intaglio processes. This
level of satisfaction, to be discussed later in this essay, translated into a
lack of interest in the advantages that the new medium could provide.
358
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
Only in the rapidly changing economic and technological environment
of the 1820s and 1830s did metal engraving's shortcomings become apparent, i.e., the incompatibility of intaglio processes with printing in an
era of machine-presses and the increased demand for speed and economy in book production. Perhaps too, whatever interest publishers may
have had in wood engraving during these early decades was simply
thwarted by a lack of skilled engravers.13As late as the 1830s, there were
no more than half-a-dozen wood engravers in New York and one in
Philadelphia, the twin centres of American publishing.14
THE EMERGENCE OF THE MASSCIRCULATION PERIODICAL IN THE 1840s
The phenomenon that most influenced wood engraving's adoption as a
graphic technology in America was the emergence of the illustrated,
mass-circulation periodical in the 1840s. A republican form of government, a free press and universal education resulted in a more literate
population in the early decades of the nineteenth century eager for a
wider variety of reading matter. Publishers responded with increased
outputs of newspapers, periodicals, and almanacs, as well as popular
fiction, histories, biography, and travel. Additionally, the popular press
supplied the literature of the myriad religious, political, social, and
health reform movements of the century. Increased literacy also encouraged publication in more serious literary genres, such as commerce, finance, science, engineering, education, and technology, that met the demands of the nation's growing professional classes.
The rapidly expanding, unpredictable, and highly competitivenature
of American publishing in these decades necessitated faster and
cheaper means of producing printed matter in all formats and genres.
Herein lies one of the principal reasons for wood engraving's triumph
as a graphic technology, i.e., the medium's adaptability to the commercial and technological requisites of an expanding and inherently unstable industry.15Through the early decades of the century, the majority
of American printers relied on the common hand-press and its ironframed successors, a design that had been ubiquitous in printing houses
for three and a half centuries. Wood engraving provided hand-press
establishments a relief process that enabled them to lock type-high
wooden blocks in the sameforme with letterpress and to print text and
illustrations simultaneously. Similarly, when cultural and economic
forces compelled the industrialization of printing, wood engraving easily adapted to use on steam-powered presses, to the development of
stereotype and electrotype plates,16 and for use on high-speed rotary
presses.17
More than any other factor in the history of publishing, the production demands of mass-circulation periodicals necessitated the mechani-
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
I
359
zation of their printing and illustration. From the emergence of the illustrated periodical in the 1840s, wood engraving stood out as the only
practicable form of illustration for serial publication. This entirely pragmatic decision to employ wood engraving in this genre proved its viability to the whole of the publishing industry, as well as acclimating a
mass readership to wood-engraved images seen in the pages of serials
received in their homes.18Wood engraving became the photography of
its age, a graphic technology that provided economical images for the
publishers and satisfying depictions of contemporary events for
readers. The insatiable demand for illustration by mass-circulation dailies, weeklies and monthlies transformed the business of wood engraving from a handful of self-taught craftsmen working in relative isolation
into a trade that was integral to the economic success of the publishing
ind~stry.'~
Earlier in this essay it was noted that publishers of surgical texts in the
United States failed to respond to the seemingly obvious technological
and economic benefits of wood engraving. It may be ventured that this
decision (or lack thereof) is tied directly to the American book trade's
lag in making the transition from the hand-press to the machine-press.
Even after the introduction of the machine-press, book publishers and
printers retained the hand-press because of their preference for the superior impressions to be had from the action of its smaller platen and
screw mechanism. Much of the American book trade prior to 1830 still
thought that quality of press work was more important than speed of
production.*OIt might be argued, therefore, that the book industry's delay in adopting wood engraving is tied to its deliberate and continued
use of the hand-press through the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The decision to maintain thestatus quo in the printing of books also
might have influenced the decision to maintain the status quo in their illustration. We have already mentioned the relegation of relief processes
to the illustration of popular literature and handbills, and use of intaglio
processes for serious i l l u s t r a t i ~ nThis
. ~ ~ argument is supported by the
fact that even though wood engraving was perfectly compatible with
hand-press technology, copper-plate engraving appears in more than
25% of all medical books published in the United States between 1800
and 1829, and in 62% of surgical texts. Wood engraving, on the other
hand, appears in less than 8% of medical books and 14% of surgical
works published during these same decades.
THE INFLUENCE OF BRITISH SURGICAL TEXTS ON AMERICAN
SURGICAL ILLUSTRATION
The second factor to be considered in the adoption of wood engraving
in American sur~icalillustration is less obvious, but critical to an under-
360
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
standing of this transition-a phenomenon that doubtless has parallels
in other areas of American book illustration. In the first decade of the
nineteenth century, 94% of all surgical texts published in the United
States were reprints of books written by British authors (Table 2)." In
the second and third decades of the century, the percentages declined to
73% and 72% respectively. In surgery, the publication of American editions of British authors far outpaced the reprinting of British medical
authors generally.23
Table 2
Authors' Nationality in Surgical Texts
Published in the United States, 1800-99
American
Authors (%)
British
Authors (%)
Other
Authors (%)
Note: This table is based on a survey of nineteenth-century
surgical titles in the collections of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and the Edward G . Miner
Library, Universityof Rochester Medical Center.
The illustration of the American editions of these works were faithfully patterned on the originals, and almost always extended beyond
the replication of the designs to employment of the same graphic media
by which they were printed. Thus, when the technology used to design
and print an illustration for a surgical title changed in London or Edinburgh, it usually changed in New York and Philadelphia as well. An
outstanding example of this phenomenon is the illustration of the
American editions of Astley Cooper's (1768-1841)A Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints. The first edition of Cooper's Treatise is a
beautifully printed and illustrated large-quarto volume published at
London by Longrnan et al. in 1822. It is illustrated with 132 steel-engraved figures printed on thirty leaves of plates.
The first American edition of Cooper's Treatise is an octavo-size volume published at Philadelphia in 1825 by Carey and Lea, and at Boston
that same year by Wells and Lilly. It is based on the third London edi-
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
361
tion (1824), and reproduces (in steel-engraving) 85 figures of the London edition on 21 leaves of plates.24A second American edition, based
upon the sixth London edition (1829), was published at Boston by Lilly
and Wait in 1832. This octavo-size volume is illustrated with 32 leaves of
steel-engraved figures, most of which were pulled from the plates used
in the 1825 edition.25What is important for us to understand in the illustration of these two editions is that the American publishers not only
followed the iconographic models established in the London editions
on which they are based, but replicated these illustrations in the graphic
medium by which they had been printed in 1824 and 1829.
Figure 3
Reduction of a dislocation of the OS femoris and pubes, in Astley Cooper,
A Treatise on Dislocations and Fractures (Boston, 1844),p. 72. This image
by the Boston wood engraver Alonzo Hartwell was copied from the
1842London edition. The block was immediately re-used in the
1844Philadelphia edition of DruittfsThePrinciples and Practice
of Modern Surgery, and as late as 1882in the 6th edition of
Samuel Gross' System of Surgery.
,
The eighth London edition of Cooper's Treatise (1832) was the last to
be illustrated with steel-engraved plates. When the London publisher
John Churchill published his "new edition" of the Treatise in 1842, the
steel-engraved figures had been re-engraved on end-grain boxwood
blocks and printed with the text. The 130 wood-engraved figures of this
London edition were subsequently copied in Boston by the wood engraver Alonzo Hartwell for the 1844 American edition, issued simultaneously by T. R. Marvin in Boston (for the Library of Practical Medicine), and by Lea and Blanchard in Philadelphia. Once again, the American publishers faithfully followed the iconography of a London exemplar; and once again, reproduced these images by medium into which
they had recently been translated.
Seventy-seven percent of the surgical texts published in the United
States between 1840 and 1849 were written by British authors, a 12% in-
362
'
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
crease over the number of American reprints of British surgical texts
issued during the 1830s (Table 2). After 1840, another generation of English and Scottish authors came to dominate American surgical publishing, and their books introduced a new generation of surgical iconography to American medical publishing through images that had been designed and printed exclusively as wood engraving.
The simultaneous printing of type and illustration made possible by
wood engraving dramatically reduced the time, labor and material required for book i l l ~ s t r a t i o nThis
. ~ ~ lower cost and the small scale of
most wood engravings made possible the use of multiple images per
page and more illustrations per volume without loss of graphic quality
or visual comprehensibility, and with only modest increase in the cost
of production. The durability of end-grain boxwood blocks allowed the
printing of 10,000 or more images from a single block. The life of a
wood-engraved image could be prolonged almost indefinitely through
its replication on a stereotype or electrotype plate, making possible the
foundation of iconographic traditions that may be found in almost
every surgical text published in the United States into the twentieth century. The visual reliability (i.e., scientific accuracy), physical durability,
and technical adaptability of wood engraving created an environment
in which illustration was no longer unique to the treatise in which it first
appeared, but became part of a repertoire of images that served the
needs not just of one author or publisher, but of medical publishing
generally.
Even more influential in this respect than Astley Cooper's treatise on
fractures and dislocations was a tradition of surgical iconography
established from the illustrated texts of three British surgeons: Robert
Liston (1794-1847),*' William Fergusson (1808-77),28and Robert Druitt
(1814-83). The wood-engraved images that illustrated the London and
Philadelphia editions of their books were used not only in successive
editions of these authors' works, but in a short time constituted a repository of images that were ubiquitous in the illustration of surgical texts
published in the United States to the end of the century.
A publishing history of the American editions of these three authors'
books, similar to our examination of Cooper's Treatise, would support
our thesis that the illustration of American surgical books at midcentury was faithfully patterned on the designs and the graphic media
used in the printing of British models, and that they established wood
engraving as the dominant medium of illustration in American surgical
publishing. We will focus, however, on the use of wood engraving in
the work of only one of these authors. No surgical work by an English
author published in the United States during the nineteenth century
better portrays the dominance and the use of wood engraving in surgi-
.
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
363
cal book illustration than Robert Druitt's The Principles and Practice of
Modern Surgery. Originally published at London in 1839 under the title
The Surgeon's Vade Mecum, Druitt's Principles appeared in fourteen
American editions between 1842 and 1867, all of which were issued by
the Philadelphia firm of Lea and Blanchard.
Figure 4
[Engraving on wood], in Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts (London, 1854?),
vol. 2, p. 611. The wood engraver stabilizes the block on a leather
pad while incising the design into the surface of the end-grain
boxwood block with a metal burin.
t
In his preface to the second edition of the Surgeon's Vade Mecum,
Druitt provides a first-hand glimpse into the illustration of medical
books at mid-century. He writes, "Of the wood engravings, about one
half are borrowed from Mr. ListonfsPracticalSurgery; and to that gentleman I must express my grateful acknowledgements for permitting me
to make use of the same blocks, which were engraved under his own direction for that excellent treatise. Of the remainder, six are copied from
Sir A. Cooper on Dislocations, and one from Tiedemann; most of the
rest were designed under my directions purposely for this work."29On
the basis of Druitt's remarks about the blocks which he received from
Liston, we see that authors not only determined the illustration of their
works but sometimes supervised their design and engraving. We also
see that in some instances, at least, authors retained rights over the use
of their blocks, with the privilege of lending them to others-thus establishing one of the principal features of wood-engraved illustration
364
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
post-1840, i.e., the formation of a repository of images made possible by
the durability of engraved boxwood blocks through many printing.
In the preface to the second American edition of 1844, Druitt credits
William Fergusson for having provided him "with drawings and preparations" from his private pathological collection, and acknowledges
the "liberality of my publishers [who] enabled me to secure the services
of that well-known artist, Mr. William Bagg" for the design of the wood
engravings new to the Surgeon's Vade Mecum ?O This same 1844Philadelphia edition contains a "Notice of the American Publishers" that states:
"Prompted by the desire of rendering this work as useful as possible to
the student, the American publishers have furnished upwards of sixty
wood-cuts not contained in the English edition."31 From these remarks
we can form an idea of how the illustration of Druitt's Principles was
worked out-a model applicable to the illustration of almost any American surgical title published during the second half of the nineteenth
century. From the author's and publisher's prefaces quoted above, we
know that some of the wood engravings in the Philadelphia editions of
the Principles were copied from those which Liston had originally lent to
Druitt; some were copied from Cooper's treatise on fractures; and the
majority copied from the wood engravings designed specificallyfor the
London editions of The Surgeon's Vade Mecum by William Bagg. The
1844 Philadelphia edition, which is based upon the third London edition (1843), is illustrated with 153 wood engravings, more than 60 of
which did not appear in the London edition. At least 18 of these new
wood engravings were printed from blocks that Lea and Blanchard had
used only the year before in the illustration of William Fergusson's A
System of Practical Surgery. These 18 illustrations were among the 246
wood engravings that Lea and Blanchard had copied from John Churchill's 1842 London edition of Fergusson, and formed part of a stock of
engraved blocks from which Lea and Blanchard (and its successors)
would draw for the next half century in the illustration of surgical
t e ~ t s . 3With
~ the addition of each new surgical title to its list, Lea and
Blanchard added to this repository of wood-engraved blocks, a practice
that became common to every publisher who employed wood-engraved illustration.
The 1848 edition of Druitt's Principles, based upon the fourth London
edition (1847), was the first of nine issues of the "New American Edition" which Lea and Blanchard (or Blanchard and Lea after 1850) published between 1848 and 1858. Fitzwilliam Sargent (1820-80), who replaced Joshua Barker Flint (1801-64) as editor with this "New American
Edition," notes in his preface, "The text and general arrangement have
not been altered.. .. I have, however, introduced many new cuts where I
deemed such further elucidation of importance. The amount of these
Wood Engraving and the lllustration of American Surgical Texts
365
changes may be understood from the fact that more than one half of the
wood-cuts in the present publication have appeared in no previous
American edition."33Sargent deleted from the "New American Edition"
60 of the wood engravings that had appeared in the 1844 Philadelphia
edition, and added 101new wood engravings. Most of these were copied
from the 1847 London edition; but many were engraved specifically for
this "New American Edition." Many other of the illustrations in this edition were derived from Lea and Blanchard's extant stock of wood engravings.The 18wood engravings from the 1843edition of FergussonlsSystem
which had been used in the illustration of the 1844edition of Druitt are reused in the 1848 edition. Two wood engravings were added to the "New
American Edition" that had just been printed in the 1848 edition of
Fergusson's System, also published by Lea and Blanchard. At least 10
wood engravings in the 1848 "New American Edition" had been used
in the illustration of the 1844 Philadelphia edition of CooperlsA Treatise
on Dislocations and Fractures of the Joints; and several more in the 1846
edition of Robert Liston's Lectures on the Operationsof Surgery.
Figure 5
Amputation at the hip joint, in William Fergusson, A System of
Practical Surgery (Philadelphia,1843),p. 197).
In 1860 Blanchard and Lea issued its "New and Revised American"
edition of Druitt's Principles, based upon the eighth London edition
366
CHRISTOPHER HOOLlHAN
(1859). Re-issued in 1867, the "New and Revised American" was the
last edition of Druitt published in the United States.The text was extensively revised and enlarged, increasing the size of the volume by a third.
Blanchard and Lea accommodated the expanded text by using a smaller
typeface and by increasing the number of lines per page. The 1860 edition contains an entirely new chapter on inflammation; greatly expanded chapters on gunshot wounds and amputation (just in time for
the American Civil War); an enlarged chapter on ophthalmic surgery
(including a description of the recently introduced ophthalmoscope);
enlarged chapters on neoplasms; descriptions of new surgical techniques for ovariotomy, vesico-vaginal fistula and hernia; extensive descriptions of new procedures for tying arteries; and an expanded chapter on chloroform (which includes an account of its introduction in
North America).
Figure 6
Lithotomy, in William Fergusson, A System of Practical Surgery
(Philadelphia, 1843),p. 612. This wood engraving is based on an
original design by William Bagg, of London, and was copied from
the wood engraving published in Robert Liston's Practical Surgey
(Philadelphia, 1838). The block was re-used in successive editions
of Robert Druitt's The Principles and Practice of Modern Surgey.
Wood Engraving and the lllustration of American Surgical Texts
367
The revision and expansion of the text were accompanied by an expansion of the book's illustration. The eighth London edition includes
239 more wood engravings than the fourth London edition. Blanchard
and Lea added another one hundred engravings from their stock to the
"New and Revised American" edition, which contains 432 wood engravings. In the illustration of the 1860 edition, Blanchard and Lea used
all but 39 of the 193 wood engravings that had illustrated the "New
American Edition." Several illustrations were re-designed and engraved, due possibly to loss or damage of the original blocks. Sixty-four
percent of the wood engraving used in the "New and Revised American" edition was either new to this edition or drawn from the illustration scheme of other publications in the stock of Blanchard and Lea, including double the number of blocks taken from the 1843 and 1848 editions of Fergusson's System. The iconographic tradition established on
the steel-engraved plates which illustrate the reduction of dislocations
in the 1822 London edition of Astley Cooper's Treatise was not only continued in the "New and Revised American" edition, but expanded. The
number of blocks either re-used from the 1844 Philadelphia edition of
Cooper's Treatise or newly engraved on wood from the steel-engraved
originals nearly doubled in the 1860 Philadelphia edition.
Wood engraving, which had appeared in 15% of American surgical
texts published during the 1830s, appeared in 38% of American surgical
texts published in the 1840s. These were the decades during which the
medium was being established in American publishing. Its complete
triumph as a book illustration technology is evidenced in its appearance
in 65% of American surgical texts published during 1850s, and a comparable 64% in the 1860s.
THE EMERGENCE OF A NATIONAL SURGICAL LITERATURE
I
By the 1850s the dominating position of English and Scottish authors in
American surgical publishing again had begun to slide. Whereas American surgeons had authored just 14% of the surgical texts published in
the United States during the 1840s, they accounted for 32% of the monographic literature in the 1850s. Between 1860 and 1869,72% of surgical
texts published in the United States were written by American surgeons
(Table 2). Although the science of surgery had continually progressed in
the decades preceding the American Civil War, this dramatic increase in
authorship is in large part attributable to the war-time experience of
American physicians, the majority of whom had little or no previous
surgical experience and equally limited knowledge of recent surgical
developments in England, France, Germany, or even the United
state^.^" "At the beginning of the conflict," writes Ira Rutkow, "the
competence of t;ie medical corps, particularly those termed 'surgeons,'
368
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
was questionable. Most of the medical volunteers had no operative
training and were capable only of general medical practice.. . yet, because so many war injuries had to be treated during the course of a 1-or
2-day battle. .. the surgical experience of thousands of physicians was
broadened. These 'surgeons' were introduced to new ideas and standards of care and became familiar with anesthetic agents. After this onsite surgical education and training, American surgical practice evolved
rapidly."35The sudden exposure of so significant a portion of the American medical profession to modern surgical ideas and techniques was
translated after the Civil War into an immediate increase in the number
of surgical books written by a newly emerged cadre of Americans surgical authors.
Representative of the growing importance of American surgery and
the concurrent growth of American surgical literature at mid-century is
Frank Hastings Hamilton's (1813-86)A Practical Treatise on Fractures and
Dislocations published at Philadelphia by Blanchard and Lea in 1860. It
is illustrated with 289 wood engravings, 26% of which were printed
from blocks that had been used to illustrate the firm's editions of Cooper, Fergusson, Druitt, and E r i ~ h s e nThe
. ~ ~majority of the book's wood
engraving, however, relied not on an iconographic tradition established
in earlier reprints of standard British authors, but on illustrations designed and engraved specifically for this title.
In Hamilton's A Treatise on Milita y Surgey and Hygiene, published at
New York by Bailliere Brothers in 1865, we see an entirely new phenomenon in American surgical illustration, i.e., the illustration of a surgical
text largely free of British influence. Though some of its 127 wood engravings drew on designs that can be traced to wood engravings in
Cooper, Liston, and others, most of the illustration is original to this
work. Interestingly, the amputation cuts were copied not from Fergusson et al., but from the work of Stephen Smith (1823-1922), the American author of the Handbook of Surgical Operations published by Bailliere
Brothers at New York in 1862.
No discussion of illustration in American surgical publishing can ignore one of the most successful treatises of the nineteenth century, written by the greatest American surgeon of his era. The fifth edition of
Samuel Gross's (1805-84) monumental A System of Surgey, published in
two volumes at Philadelphia in 1872 by Henry C. Lea, contains nearly
1,400 wood engravings. Gross writes in his preface, "Of the engravings
which adorn the volumes upwards of six hundred are original. The remainder have been copied (i.e., printed from extant blocks; or copied
and re-engraved) from the large collection in the possession of Mr.
~ e a . Gross
" ~ ~ notes an increasingly common feature of surgical book
and periodical illustration after 1860, i.e., the direct provision to pub-
Wood Engraving and the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
369
Figure 7
Lente's thigh splint, applied, in Frank H. Hamilton,A Practical Treatise on
Fractures and Dislocations (2nd ed., Philadelphia, 1863), p. 413. This
wood engraving was supplied Hamilton by the firm of Georg Tiemann
(New York), manufacturer of medical & surgical instruments.
l
lishers or authors of wood engravings that illustrate instruments and
equipment by their manufacturers. He thanks the firms of Gemrig and
Kolbe and Tiemann and Company for the "numerous engravings illustrative of the latest improvements in surgical instruments, apparatus,
and appliances," and also credits Surgeon-General Joseph Bames "for
many of the cuts which illustrate the subject of gunshot wounds." 38
Among the wood engravings borrowed from "the large collection in
the possession of Mr. Lea" are those that illustrate the chapters on fractures and dislocations. Gross's chapter on fractures (Vol. 1, chap. 8), for
example, is illustrated with 146 wood engravings (378-524), 41 of which
appeared in the fourth edition of Hamilton's A Practical Treatise on Fractures and Dislocations published by Lea the previous year. The chapter
on dislocations (Vol. 2, chap. 1)is illustrated with 69 wood engravings
(1-69), 30 of which had first been published in Hamilton's 1871Practical
Treatise. Not surprisingly, many of the designs in both chapters can be
traced to the wood engraving of Astley Cooper's 1844 work on the same
subject.
The treatises of authors such as Hamilton and Gross indicate a growing native corpus of wood-engraved surgical images, supplemented by
370
I
CHRlSTOPHER HOOLIHAN
a continued but declining reliance on British surgical iconography. This
can in part be attributed to the increased number of surgical texts written by American surgeons during and after the Civil War; but also to
new developments in surgical pathology, procedures and equipment
during the final three decades of the nineteenth century-developments that necessitated an entirely new generation of illustration. Surgical texts published in the two decades prior to the Civil War commonly begin with a discussion of inflammation that had not changed in
substance since the era of John Hunter. The narration typically continues with a discussion of hemorrhage, ulceration, and infection; and
examines cancers, the various kinds of wounds, and venereal diseases.
Working from the head down (or from the feet up), the typical surgical
author pre-1860 discusses the surgical treatment of tumors, bone
diseases, joint diseases, fractures and dislocations, and amputation. Injuries of the arteries, spine and face also might be included here. Abdominal surgery is limited largely to the treatment of hernia, and urogenital surgery to urethral constriction and the removal of calculi. Some
surgical treatises add a discussion of mastectomy or the correction of
clubfoot. This relatively stable repertoire of surgical topics was illustrated from a large and predictable corpus of wood-engraved images.
American surgical texts published after the Civil War provide more
detailed discussion of tissue repair, infection, mortification, and septicemia. The discussion of surgical pathology is expanded to include microscopical anatomy, and pathology. Cutaneous surgery is added to the
book's contents, and includes skin grafting. Bodily systems that had
previously received scant textual attention (such as the lymphatic, nervous, circulatory, and digestive systems) are now the focus of entire
chapters. The discussion of abdominal surgery is expanded beyond
hernia to include gastrotomy, intestinal obstruction, laparotomy, and
colotomy. The capabilities of urogenital surgery are extended to
nephrotomy, vesico-vaginal fistula, cancers, ovariotomy, and extirpation of the uterus. The possibilities of orthopedic surgery are also extended beyond the traditional interest in fractures and dislocations.
Chapters on anesthetics become standard in post-Civil War surgical
texts, and amputation is discussed in greater depth.
All this required an expansion and alteration of the kinds of images
with which surgical texts had been illustrated for nearly half a century.
The traditional corpus of illustration was no longer entirely adequate.
Cooper's series of illustrations on reducing dislocations continued to illustrate surgical texts through the end of the century, but many familiar
images depicting the treatment of fractures and dislocations disappeared from the corpus of wood engraving. New ideas, new operations,
new techniques, and new equipment required new illustration.
Wood Engraving
. and
.
the Illustration of American Surgical Texts
37 1
THE DECLINE OF WOOD ENGRAVING
Although the nature and scope of surgical illustration altered after 1865,
wood engraving remained the medium by which these new images
were printed. In the 1870s, 87% of American surgical books contained
wood-engraved illustration, in comparison to 62% of medical texts generally. During the 1880s surgical texts overwhelmingly were still illustrated with wood engraving, although the percentage of volumes containing wood-engraved illustration had slipped 11% (Table3).
Table 3
Percentages of Medical and Surgical Books
Illustrated with Wood Engraving, 1850-99
All medical
books (%)
I
Surgical
books (%)
By the end of the 1860s, methods had been developed in England to
photographically transfer the artist's finished drawing directly onto the
end-grain of boxwood blocks; and by the late 1870sphototransfer methods were employed by American wood-engraving firms as
Although the process was intended to simplify production, i.e., to make
the preparation of blocks for engraving faster and more efficient, the application of photography to wood engraving ultimately spelled its
doom.40Initially, the process was regarded simply as a better mechanism for transferring the designs that guided the wood engraver's
work. The possibility of extending the phototransfer process beyond its
original intention soon became evident, however. The next step was to
go beyond the use of phototransfer as a process for replicating handdrawn designs onto boxwood blocks, and to make the photographic
image itself the illustration. It was not only possible to more conveniently transfer the artist's drawing by the phototransfer process, but to
develop an actual photograph on the surface of a chemically prepared
block. This photographic image still required executionby the wood engraver in order to be made into a printable relief block. Nonetheless, the
extension of phototransfer from a facsimile process for the transmission
of art work to a mechanism for the transfer of photographic images was
a crucial intermediary step in a process that soon made wood engraving
obsolete as a book illustration t e ~ h n o l o g y . ~ ~
372
I
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
Wood engraving served surgical illustration well during the nineteenth century, as evidenced by the fact that until its last decade, surgical books contained significantlyhigher percentages of wood-engraved
illustration than other medical books (Table 3). The linearity and clarity
characteristic of the wood-engraved image allowed detailed yet easily
comprehended depictions of pathological conditions, surgical procedures, instruments, and bandaging techniques. Earlier in the century,
wood engraving had supplanted engraving on metal and warded off
the threat from lithography because it produced images of equal or superior quality to these media, and because wood-engraved blocks were
substantially less expensive to prepare and print. Although the actual
engraving of boxwood blocks was a manual process that defied industrialization, wood engraving proved adaptable to every significant
development in printing technology over the course of nearly nine decades. Wood engraving's demise as a commercially viable book illustration technology was guaranteed, however, once the process for preparing relief plates was itself industrialized.
The final stage in the mechanization of book illustration that had begun with the phototransfer of artists' drawings was the emergence of
photochemical and photomechanical processes for the production of relief plates. The history and development of these processes is beyond
the scope of this essay. Suffice it is to point out that the advantages by
which wood engraving had overcome competing graphic technologies
earlier in the century had been equalled or superceded by new technologies in the late 1880s. The lithographic surface block and the photochemically produced relief line block proved capable of printing in-text
line illustrations equal in quality to wood engraving. More importantly,
perhaps, the new photolithographic, photoengraving and halftone processes made practicable the photographic illustration of the printed
page. Of equal importance, the new processes cut production time and
thus substantially reduced costs. In 1896 a wood engraving cost one to
two dollars per square inch to prepare. In comparison, the new process
plates cost only 20 to 40 cents per square inch.42
It would be too simple to attribute to economic factors alone the preference for new technologies in the illustration of surgical books between 1890 and 1899. The examination of any major surgical text published during this decade provides graphically compelling evidence for
their success. Wood engravings (or relief line block facsimiles of wood
engravings) were sometimes retained for printing illustrations of surgical instruments or for schematic illustrations whose purpose was
mnemonic, i.e., the visual simplification of complex conditions or procedures. The halftone photograph, however, largely supplanted wood
engraving in the illustration of gross pathological conditions (providing
Wood Engraving and the illustration of American Surgical Texts
373
dramatic images of patients in pre- or post-operative states). Similarly,
photomicrographs far surpassed the graphic capability of wood engraving to depict abnormal conditions of bone or tissue.
Before the emergence of processed relief plates in the mid-1880s, the
replication of photographic images through wood engraving promised
a new yet unrealized dimension in scientific illustration. Although the
photographs developed on the surface of boxwood blocks required
manual engraving, the very idea of an image captured by the camera's
lens suggested an objectivity in the printed image independent of human mediation, i.e., unaffected by selection, interpretation or distortion
on the part of the artist. Although the economic benefits of the new processes cannot be ignored, their immediate success in book illustration
cannot be attributed to cost per square inch alone. In the 1887edition of
his manual on book illustration, Henry Trueman Wood observed, "Photographs, and the mechanical processes which have been the outcome
of photography, have educated the public eye to a more delicate, more
minute style of work than is proper to wood engraving. The art [i.e.,
wood engraving] has endeavored to compete with its rivals on their
own ground, and is being rapidly worsted in the attempt. The simple
outlines that were once accepted as satisfactory, now no longer suff i ~ e . "Although
~~
Wood wrote of "naturalism" in non-scientific illustration, the applicability of his observation to medical and surgical illustration is obvious. The new graphic media triumphed not only by the
economies they offered the publishing industry, but by the new dimension they brought to book illustrationat the turn of the twentieth century.
NOTES
1 The intaglio process required incising lines into a soft metal plate (such as copper or
zinc) with a sharp metal graver or burin. The plate was placed on a rolling press capable of far greater pressure than that exerted by the screw mechanism of the hand-press
on which type was printed. The engraved plate was inked and wiped clean, leaving
the ink in the incised lines only. The plate was then brought in contact with a sheet of
dampened paper under the immense pressure of the roller, which virtually forced the
ink out of the incised lines onto the paper.
2 Lithography was a planographic process perfected in Bavaria by Aloys Senefelder in
1798. The design to be printed was drawn directly onto the surface of a polished calcareous stone using a crayon of resinous or oily ink. A weak solution of sulphuric acid
was poured over the stone. Through a chemical reaction, the acid bath left the design
insoluble, while at the same time loweringslightly the surfaceof the stone that was not
drawn upon. In the printing process, the stone was washed with water and printing
ink applied. The ink adhered to the design, but was repelled by the wet surface of the
stone, which was then passed through the printingpress.
3 Wood engravingsare often impossible to distinguish from metal relief cuts at this period.
4 The standard biography of Bewick is still Montague Weekly's Thomas Bewick (London:
Oxford University Press, 1953).
5 The most complete study of Anderson's life and early career is Jane Pomeroy's "Alexander Anderson's life and engravings before 1800," Proceedings of the American Anti-
374
I
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
quartan Soclety (1990): 137-230.Earlier studies of enduring value are Benson Lossing, A
memor~alof Alexander Anderson, M.D. (New York: printed for the subscribers, 1872);
and Frederic Burr, Lrfe and Works of Alexander Anderson (New York: Burr Brothers,
1893).
6 Anderson's pioneer role in the wood-engraved illustration of medical texts is established in Christopher Hoolihan, "Wood engraving and American Medical Publishing
in the Early NineteenthCentury," Imprmt, 21(1996):21-24.
7 Isaac Collins entered the printing trade in New Jersey in 1770. By the turn of the century he was one of the country's most productive and highly regarded publishers.He
entered into a partnership with Benjamin Perkins in 1805 that dissolved with the latter's death in 1810.The Collins firm was noted for its publications in science and medicine.
8 In his preface Bard states that his intention in the Compendium was simply to "render
the work acceptable to students and practitioners. ..and to furnish them in one small
volume, and at little expense, with copies of the most useful plates, which can be procured only by the purchase of many expensive works. This has been the principle motive for the addition of plates, which being rather sketches, than finished designs, and
executed on wood, have been done at no great expense." One of Bard's reasons for employment of a little known technology in the illustration of his text may lie in his acquaintancewith Alexander Anderson whom he knew as one of his students at Columbia College and whom he examined when Anderson applied for medical licensure in
1795.
9 In the "Advertisement" prefacing the first volume, the publishers note that their edition of Bell'sAnatomy is priced at "less than half that of the London copy, as sold in this
country" (Bell,Anatomy, Vol. 1,p. v).
10 The Print and Photograph Collection of the New York Public Library possesses 12
scrapbooks of proofs pulled from wood-engraved blocks by Alexander Anderson.
Volume 5, p. 22-45 contains proofs for the wood engravings that illustrate Bard's Compendium, J. Bell'sAnatomy, and C. Bell'sPrrnclples of Surgery.
11 The same blocks were used in the second Hartford edition published by George
Goodwin and Sons in 1816, and then disappear.
12 Steel engraving and lithography also made their appearance in this decade, illustrating 6% of surgicalbooks published between 1820and 1829.
13 The earliest practitioners of wood engraving were drawn largely from the ranks of
metal engravers. Few engravers were apparently willing to venture into a new branch
of engraving that initially offered little work or remuneration. Longworth's Amertcan
Almanack, New-York Reglster and C ~ t Dlrectoy
y
for 1805 (New York: Longworth, 1805)
lists 11engravers in the entire city of New York, only one of whom is known to have
been active as a wood engraver (i.e., Alexander Anderson, who himself trained only
four apprentices during his long career).
14 The wood engraver Benjamin Lossing maintained that when he began his career in
1838there were only five other wood engravers in New York, two in Boston and one in
Philadelphia (Lossing,A Memorlal of Alexander Anderson, M.D., p. 79-80).
15 Many factors contributed to the instability of the publishing industry in the first three
decades of the nineteenth century. Although technological improvements might reduce the cost of book production, other factors mitigated against it, e.g., the proliferation of publishing firms after 1800; continued competition from Great Britain; cutthroat marketing practices such as price-cutting and underselling; the difficulty of
securing capital; establishing effective sales and distribution networks, especially in
the more remote areas of an expanding nation; containing the costs of printing, illustration, paper, ink,etc.; cash flow problems consequent on meeting production costs
with income from a product that required long-term marketing, sales and distribution;
copyright issues, etc. These issues are admirably addressed in: Michael Hackenberg,
ed., Gettzng the Books Out (Washington, DC.: Center for the Book, 1987); Ronald J.
Zboray, A Ftctwe People: Antebellum Economlc Development and the Amertcan Readtng
Wood Engraving and the illustration of American Surgical Texts
16
17
18
19
20
375
Public (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);RosalindRemer,Printers and Men of
Capital: Philadelphia Book Publishers in the New Republic (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
The high speeds and pressure at which machine-presses operated caused increasing
wear on typefacesand wood-engraved blocks. The introduction of stereotypingin the
1830s solved the problem of increased wear on relief surfaces. Initially, stereotype
plates were made by making a plaster cast of type-pages from which a metal printing
plate could be cast. A contemporary description of the process appears in Thomas
F. Adam, Typographia; or, the Printer's .Instructor (Philadelphia: L. Johnson, 1856,
c1845), p. 32. Multiple stereotypeplates could be made from a single setting of type, allowing the same pages to be printed on multiple presses simultaneously.Stereotyping
also allowed the storage of plates for reissue of books that proved successful on the
market. The process was quickened late in the 1830swith the development of a flexible
paper mould called "flong." The flong method allowed casting plates four times
larger than what the plaster medium allowed. They could also be shaped to conform
to the platens of a rotary press. Stereotypeplates gave way to electrotypesin the 1850s.
Electrotyping was a galvanic process through which plates were made by coating type
with warmed wax, removing the resulting mould, brushing the interior with graphite .
(a conductor), and immersing the mould in a tank containing a solution of metal connected to a galvanic battery. In the bath the mould grew a coating of metal which
formed the face of the plate. It was strengthened with a backing of wood or metal.
"Electros" more faithfully reproduced the details of wood-engraved blocks.
A landmark in the mechanizationof printing was the steam-powered press introduced
at London in 1816by Friedrich Koenig. It boasted two cylinders capable of printing both
sides of a sheet simultaneously, and was capable of printing 750 sheets per hour (compared to 150sheets per hour on a hand-press).Koenig's press was quickly adopted by the
British newspaper and periodicaltrade for its speed of operation and the increased size of
its cylindrical platen. This model was employed by The Times of London, whose engineers refined the machinery to the point where by 1827 its cylinder presses were producing up to 5,000 impressionsper hour. SeeJohnTebbell,A History of Book Publishing in
the United States,Vol. 1(New York: R. R. Bowker, 1972)p. 258.
"The enormous increase in the business of wood engraving in this country is due,
mainly, to the influence of illustrated periodicals, which have diffused a taste and
created so great a demand for such helps to popular education in all branches of leaming, that very few books are now published without the attractions of the wood enp. 81).
graver's art" (Lossing,A memorial of Alexander Anderson, M.D.,
The illustrated newspaper par excellence at mid-century was the lllustrated London
News, which began publication in 1842. Its wood engraving department was under
the supervision of Frank Leslie (1821-80),who emigrated to the United States in 1848.
Once settled in New York, Leslie engraved for several periodicalsbefore the first issue
of Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper appeared on 15 December 1855. Leslie soon
found himself publisher of the most successful illustrated periodical in America, and
harbinger of a new age in popular journalism. Harper Brothers in New York entered
this promising market in June 1850 with the first monthly issue of Harper's Magazine
(1850-1900).Later the firm began publication of Harper's Weekly (1857-1916).In 1855
Harper's Magazine had a monthly circulation of 140,000 copies. Each issue contained
what amounted to 16full pages of wood-engraved illustration. If the illustrationof just
one issue had been printed from copper- or steel-engravedplates, it would have taken
a single press a minimum of 12 years to pull a sufficient number of intaglio illustrations
for that single issue. In comparison, one press printing wood-engraved illustrations
would have taken a month. Harper Brothers employed 20 machine-presses in the
printing of each of its monthly issues. See Joseph Abbott, The Harper Establishment
(Hamden,Conn.: ShoestringPress, 1956),p. 106.
Illustration was not the only aspect of American book production to lag behind technologicaldevelopmsnt: "While printers and publishers soughtways to reduce costs, and in-
376
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
vestments in technology played a part in this,most of the effects of their efforts occurred
later. Despite publishers' challenges to papermakers to develop new manufacturing
techniques, most books before 1830 were still printed on handmade paper. Massproduced cloth case bindings for books were not used regularly until after 1825;before
that time, every book still had to be bound by hand. And while there was a move away
from wooden presses.. . few structural changes in presses were made that would effect the efficiency of printing." Remer, Printers and Men of Capital, p. 95.
21 This bias against relief processes is evidenced in the fact that each of the 23 leaves of
copper-plate engraving in John Bell'sThe Anatomy of the Human Body (NewYork, 1809)
is signed with the name of the illustrator and the name of the engraver. None of the 80
wood engravings in this text are signed, clearly indicating that engraving on metal
was regarded as an art and wood engraving as simply another relief process produced
by anonymous mechanics. We would not know who executed the wood engravingsin
this book but for the presence of their proofs in Alexander Anderson's scrapbooks at
the New York Public Library.
22 The data in Table 1 for the decade 1800-09is corroboratedby a survey of surgical titles
,in Robert Austin's Early American Medical Imprints: a Guide to Works Printed in the
United States 1668-1820 (Washington,DC.: US Dept. of Health Education and Welfare,
1961).Of the seven surgical texts Listed in Austin that were published during this decade, six were written by British surgeons and one was translated from the French.
There is no entry for an American author published 1800-09 in the bibliographicvolume of Ira Rutkow's The History of Surgery in the United States, 1775-1900, Vol. 1 (San
Francisco: Norman Publishing, 1988).
23 Sixty-five percent of American medical books published between 1800 and 1809 were
written by British authors; as were 50% of books published between 1810 and 1819;
and 49%between 1820 and 1829. (These percentages are based on a survey of 1,669
nineteenth-century titles in the collectionsof the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
and 1,448 titles held by the Edward G. Miner Library, Rochester, N.Y.) These figures
for medical books parallel statistics for American publishing generally in the opening
decades of the nineteenth century. In 1820, only 30%of books published in the United
States had been written by American authors.By 1830 this percentage had increased to
40%and to 55%by 1840. See David Kaser,Messrs. Carey and Lea of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957),p. 70.
24 The plates bear the imprint of Carey and Lea in both the Philadelphia and Boston issues.
25 The illustration of the 1825 and 1832 American editionsof the Treatise represents one of
the most extensive uses of steel engraving in American medical book illustration, and
also one of the last.
26 The comparative cost of illustrating medical books with intaglio plates and wood engravings in the 1830s is recorded in the account books of the Philadelphia publishers
Carey and Lea. Four wood engravings illustrate the May 1835 issue (Vol. 16, no. 31) of
the firm's American Iournal of the Medical Sciences. They are entered in the accounts of
Carey and Lea at $15.00, or $3.75per block. In the second number of the AIMS for 1835,
there is only one wood engraving. It is entered in the cost book at $2.50. In this same
number there are also two plates engraved on metal depicting the jejunum that accompany W. E. Horner's article on changes of the intestinal membranes due to cholera.
The two intaglio plates cost Carey and Lea $50.00 for "engraving and drawing," and
another $24.00 for "printing &C."In other words, each plate cost $37.00 to engrave and
print-a considerablesum compared to the $2.50expended on the lone (if less spectacular) wood engraving. In the very next issue (Nov. 1835, Vol. 17, no. 33) the single
wood engraving of a fetus born with cranial deformity cost Carey and Lea $3.00. By
comparison, the engraved plate which appears in the Feb. 1836 issue (Vol. 17, no. 34)
cost $25.00.The two very carefully hand-colored intaglio plates which illustrate C. W.
Pennock's article "On the Malignant Postule" in the Nov. 1836 issue (Vol. 19, no. 37) of
the AIMS cost $109.50.Pennock paid half the cost. See David Kaser, ed., The Cost Book
Wood Engraving and the illustration of American Surgical Texts
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
377
of Carey and Lea, 1825-1838 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963),
p. 315-20.
At Philadelphia in 1838, James Crissy published the first American edition of Robert
Liston's Practzcal Surgery, scarcely a year after the publication of the first London edition. The Philadelphia edition contains 120 wood engravings faithfully copied from
the original designs that had been engraved on wood by William Bagg under Liston's
own supervision. A second American edition of the Practical Surgery was published at
Philadelphia by Thomas, Cowperthwait and Company in 1842. It contains 138illustrations, including all but six of the wood engravings of Crissy's 1838 edition, printed
from the same blocks. The publishers deleted five wood engravings and re-engraved
one (enlarging and reversing the image in the process). Twenty-two new wood engravings appear in this second American edition, corresponding to additions made to
the third London edition (1840)on which it is based. The availability of these blocks for
re-use is explained by the fact that Crissy, who published the first American edition,
printed the second editionfor Thomas, Cowperthwait and Company.
In 1843the Philadelphia firm of Lea and Blanchard published the first American edition of William Fergusson'sA System of Practical SPrgery. Based upon the 1842London
edition, it contains246 wood engravings, the largest number to appear in an American
surgical text to that date.
Robert Druitt, The Surgeon's VadeMecum. 2nd ed. (London:John Churchill, 1841),p. X.
Robert Druitt, The Principles and Practice of Modern Surgery. From the 3rd London ed.
(Philadelphia:Lea and Blanchard, 1844),p.X.
Druitt, Principles, p. viii.
It does not appear that wood-engraved blocks were commonly exchanged between
London publishers and their colleagues in Philadelphia or New York. In the last quarter of the century, however, agreements were sometimesmade for stereotype or electrotype plates to be manufactured in England for use on American presses; or the
sheets of an entire book to be printed in England and shipped to the US, where a titlepage with an American edition statementand imprint would be added.
Robert Druitt, The Principles and Practice of Surgery. New American Ed. (Philadelphia:
Lea and Blanchard, 1848),p. xi.
For a contemporaryAmerican perspective on these developments in surgery, see John
Mason Warren, Recent Progress in Surgery (Boston: David Clapp, 1864).Warren's text
gives no evidence of his having sensed the impact of recent hostilities on the knowledge and competencies of American surgeons serving with the military.
Ira Rutkow, Surgery: An lllustrated History (St. Louis: Mosby, 1993),p. 445.
The first American edition of John Erichsen's The Science and Art of Surgery was published at Philadelphiaby Blanchard and Lea in 1854.It contains 311wood engravings,
290 of which were cut specificallyfor this title.
SamuelD. Gross,A System of Surgery. 5thed. (Philadelphia:Henry C. Lea, 1872),p.vi.
Gross, System of Surgery, p. vi.
The details of vhototransfer methods for wood enerravinz were trade secrets. Although our understanding of these processes is largeG conj&tural, it is likely that artists' designs were transferred to the surface of a block that had been coated with analbumen s&tion sensitized with silver nitrate. The negative (i.e., design) was exposed
directly on the block and fixed with hypo. For a thorough discussionof these methods
see Paul Fildes, "Phototransfer of Drawings in Wood-Block Engraving," Journal of the
Printing Historical Society, 5 (1969):87-98.
Until the development of photochemical and photomechanicalrelief processes in the
mid-1880s, the direct use of photography in book illustration was limited to manually
mounting photographic prints in the printed text or on stiff boards bound with the
text. Processing prints from negatives and individually mounting prints was inordinately time-consuming and hence expensive. Unlike other graphic technologies, the
cost of producing photographic prints from negatives did not decrease in inverse proportion to the number of prints manufactured.
378
CHRISTOPHER HOOLIHAN
41 One of the more significant effects of the phototransfer process on wood engraving
was its influence on the stvle in which wood enmavings
"
" were executed. From its inception, wood engraving relied on linearity in the composition of images, even in the
interpretation of light and shade. The technicwe seemed inherently adverse to the tints
and iones charact&tic of the photographi~image.~onetheless,'it was the "naturalness" of the photograph that intrigued publishers and their readers. As a result, wood
engravers Gho engraved photo&aphic images transferred to boxwood blocks abandoned the pattern of lines characteristicof "old school" wood engraving in pursuit of
&graving
a style thit imitated the photograph. This was technically acGeved iy
masses of compacted dots, lozenges and stipples. The effects of this so-called "New
School" style gave wood engraving a tonal effect unmistakably inspired by photography. For contrasting contemporary views on the linearity versus tonality debate see
William James Linton, The History of Wood-Engraving in America (Watkins Glen, N.Y.:
American Life Foundation and Study Institute, 1976), a facsimile of the 1882 Boston
edition; and Elbridge Kingsley, "Wood-Engraving Direct from Nature," The Century
Illustrated Monthly Magazine, 25 (1882):49.
42 David Woodward, "The Decline of Commercial Wood-Engraving in Nineteenwentury America,"]ournal ofthe Printing Historical Society, 10 (1974-75):75.
43 Henry Trueman Wood, Modem Methods of Illustrating Bwks (New York: A. C.
Armstrong, 1887),p. 85.