An account of the principal lazarettos in Europe; with various papers relative to the plague: together with further observations on some foreign prisons and hospitals; and additional remarks on the present state of those in Great Britain and Ireland. by HOWARD, John

Warrington, printed by William Eyres; and sold by T. Cadell, J. Johnson, C. Dilly, and J. Taylor, in London. 1789. 4to., with 22 engraved plates (of which 20 are folding) and one very large engraved folding table, viii + 259 + (15)pp., wanting the half-title, with a short closed tear in title but no loss, the title leaf laid down, bound in full contemporary maroon russia with gilt rules, sometime rebacked to match, spine gilt and lettered with the near-contemporary armorial bookplate of Robert Fellowes> (1770-1847), the rich philanthropist and sometime editor of the Critical Review.> An excellent presentation copy inscribed by Howard on the fly leaf ('the gift of Mr. Howard>'), and with a 10-line autograph note tipped in, written and signed by Howard on May 20, 1789, presenting this copy to Fellowes commenting that 'With pleasure I send over one of the two remaining copies of my last edit[ion] on \prisons - I left at Mr. Johnsons for Mr Fellowes by publication on Lazarettos. - I read little on the subject of the plague, as I wish to draw my inferences from close observation on the disorder itself, and those not from the theories of persons who have never visited patients in that ------- (?) and indeed my present opinion of it is different from any I have yet found in books .....'. First edition. This was a sequel to Howard's iconic work on prisons (Warrington, 1777). 'Shortly after Howard had visited his first prisons in the winter of 1773 he became interested in other public institutions and began to investigate bridewells, hospitals, and lazarettos. He soon became aware of the various medical and public health problems which are indigenous in such institutions. As he says in the introduction to the Lazarettos>: 'In my latest tours, I had with pain observed, that notwithstanding the regulations which had been made in our country, and elsewhere, for preserving health in prisons and hospitals, yet that infectious diseases continued occasionally to arise and spread in them. I had also been led, by the view of several lazarettos in my travels, to consider how much all trading nations are exposed to that dreadful scourge of mankind [plague] ....'. He had recorded in the 1784 edition of The state of the prisons> a wish 'that some future traveller would give us plans of this lazaretto [Leghorn], and that at Ancona and other places.' The following year he sailed abroad to do the job himself. The plans and careful notes on the management and personnel of the various institutions he visited constitute the bulk of the Lazarettos.> [Baumgartner p.33].