The exceptionally rare second printing

GRAUNT, John.

Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a following Index, and made upon the Bills of Mortality, with reference to the Government, Religion, Trade, Growth, Air, Diseases, and the several Changes of the said City, the Second Edition.

London: John Martin & James Allestry, 1662.

2nd Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #003088

4to (190 x 148 mm). [16], 79 [1] pp. Two folding tables. Bound in 19th-century plain vellum, spine titled in ink, marbled endpapers, several blank leaves bound in at end. Text browned mainly in outer margins, occasional minor spotting, title-page dust-soiled, somewhat stained and with lower corner slightly rounded, extensive manuscript notes on first flyleaf. Provenance: American physician Huntington Williams (armorial bookplate to front pastedown and original sales receipt by Maggs Brow, dated 1st May 1922). Still a very good copy, collated complete. ----

NLM/Krivatsy 4952 (imperfect); not in Wellcome; PMM 144 (1st edition); Norman 933 (1st edition); Goldsmiths' 1665; Kress 1155; Wing G1599A; ESTC R12046. - RARE SECOND EDITION, published in the same year of the first. Graunt's observations on the bills of mortality led to the publication of the first life table to be based on real mortality data. Designed to provide a warning against the plague epidemic, the bills of mortality did not give the age of death, but did provide the cause of death, and from this Graunt was able to estimate that 36% of all deaths concerned children under the age of six. Among the wide range of deaths listed in the Table of Casualty are the more common as well as Excessive drinking, Fainted in a Bath, Grief, Killed by several Accidents, Lethargy, Leprosie, Overlaid and starved at Nurse, and Suddenly (PMM). "Graunt was a friend of Sir William Petty. Some authorities attribute authorship of the above work to Petty. In his A bibliography of Sir William Petty F.R.S. and of Observations on the bills of Mortality by John Graunt, F.R.S, (1971) Geoffrey Keynes traces the interrelationship of these authors." (Garrison-Morton 1686). The second edition can be regarded even rarer than the first. According to Book Auction Records and rarebookhub no copy is recorded to have sold at auction in the past 50 years.

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