1815-1850: Science and Medicine: Publications

John James Audubon, Birds of America) From Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories (New York: J. J. Audubon; Philadelphia: J. B. Chevalier, 1840–1844)—originally published in London and Edinburgh between 1827 and 1838, it documented 1, 065 birds in 435 aquatints. The accompanying volumes of text, Ornithological Biography, appeared between 1831 and 1839;

William Beaumont, Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion (Plattsburgh, N.Y.: F. P. Allen, 1833)—one of the few major contributions to science and medicine in the antebellum United States;

Jacob Bigelow, American Medical Botany: Being a Collection of the Native Medicinal Plants of the United States, Containing Their Botanical History and Chemical Analysis, and Properties and Uses in Medicine, Diet and the Arts, with Colored Engravings (Boston: Cummings & Hilliard, 1817–1820);

George Combe, Elements of Phrenology, fourth American edition (Boston: Marsh, Capen ScLyon, 1835);

Amos Eaton, Manual of Botany for the Northern States: Comprising Generic Descriptions of All Phenogamous and Cryptogamous Plants to the North of Virginia (Albany, N.Y.: Websters & Skinners, 1817)—appeared in eight editions over twenty-five years;

John Gorham, Elements of Chemical Science (Boston: Cummings & Hilliard, 1819–1820)—the earliest chemistry textbook by an American author;

Asa Gray, The Elements of Botany (New York: G. & C. Carvill, 1836)—the first American botanical text to abandon the traditional Linnaean classification;

Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever,” New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine (1843)—one of the major contributions to medicine by an American in the nineteenth century;

Thomas Nuttall, The Genera of North American Plants, and Catalogue of the Species to the Year 1817 (Philadelphia: D. Heartt, 1818);

Robert Dale Owen, Moral Physiology; Or, A Brief and Plain Treatise on the Population Question, second edition (New York: Wright & Owen, 1830)—the first treatise on birth control published in the United States;

Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, Familiar Lectures on Botany, Including Practical and Elementary Botany, With Generic and Specific Descriptions of the Most Common Native and Foreign Plants, and a Vocabulary of Botanical Terms, For the Use of Higher Schools and Academies (Hartford, Conn.: H. & F. J. Huntington, 1829)—one of the most popular botanical works in the nineteenth century, it went to twenty-nine editions and sold 375, 000 copies;

Thomas Say, American Entomology; or, Descriptions of the Insects of North America; Illustrated by Coloured Figures from Original Drawings Executed from Nature (Philadelphia: S. A. Mitchell, 1824–1828)—included illustrations by Titian Peale;

Samuel Tyler, A Discourse of the Baconian Philosophy (Frederick City, Md.: E. Hughes, 1844)—a defense and promotion of the Baconian approach to science, to which most American scientists adhered in the antebellum period.