GIBBINGS, Thomas. Dissertatio medica inauguralis de rubeola. Quam annuente summo numine, ex auctoritate reverendi admodum viri, Gulielmi Robertson, S.S.T.P. academiae Edinburgenae praefecti, nec non amplissimi senatus academici consensu et nobilissimae facultatis medicae decreto, pro gradu doctoris, summisque in medicina honoribus et privilegiis rite et legitime consequendis; eruditorum examini subjicit Thomas Gibbings, hibernus. Soc. Physico-Med. et Med. Sodal. Ad diem 12 Junni, horo locoque solitis.

MEASLES IN RED MOROCCO - IRISH PHYSICIAN AT EDINBURGH

Edinburgi, apud Balfour et Smellie. 1771. First edition. Octavo. pp. [4], 30. Contemporary full red morocco, boards with gilt-tooled borders, spine gilt in compartments (alternating floral tools, one a thistle), buntpapier gilt patterned endpapers. Light wear to extremities. All edges gilt. A fine copy.
A finely-bound example of a printed doctoral dissertation by a medical student at the University of Edinburgh during the heyday of the Scottish Enlightenment, this treatise on measles was the work of the Irish physician Thomas Gibbings. The printed dedication is addressed to Bartholomew Gibbings of Gibbings Grove, County Cork, George Cleghorn (1716-1789), professor of anatomy at Dublin, and Charles Leslie, physician of Cork. Typically, graduating students at Edinburgh in the second half of the eighteenth century would have a small number of their dissertations printed on superior, thick paper and finely-bound, as here, for presentation to friends or patrons and for retention in their own libraries. The volume was bound in Edinburgh by a master bookbinder whose work can be identified decorating other contemporaneous dissertations printed by Balfour and Smellie, then printers to Edinburgh University. The paper used here for the pastedowns is a fine continental buntpapier incorporating foliage, flowers and birds printed in gilt on a light green ground.

[L1BC 1C]