Savage Life in Central Australia
London, Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1924.
Octavo, xii, 184 pages plus 90 plates (on 41 pages) and a folding map (325 × 275 mm).
Gilt-pictorial cloth lightly marked and rubbed, with the rear cover lightly scuffed; top edge lightly foxed; stitching slightly cracked at one opening, with a few adjacent gatherings now slightly proud of the edges; essentially a fine copy.
The 'country, the habits and customs as well as the beliefs of the Wonkonguru and their neighbours [east of Lake Eyre] ... For the last eight or nine years Mr Aiston has dwelt at Mungeranie, although more than twenty years he has spent in aborigines' haunts ... Above all an incalculable debt of gratitude is due to Sir Baldwin Spencer, who not once, but several times, read through and corrected the manuscript'. Provenance: Sir John Burton Cleland (1878-1971), with his contemporary ownership signature in pencil (J.B. Cleland) on the front flyleaf. Cleland, pathologist and naturalist, began 'a systematic study of what must be one of the largest series of meticulous autopsy examinations ever conducted by one person - over 7000. Cleland regarded each post-mortem examination as a voyage of discovery and never wearied, continuing to do routine autopsy work into his mid-80s ... He had an unrivalled experience in macroscopic morbid anatomy and histopathology, and often diagnosed rare conditions almost at a glance. With each further 1000 autopsy records amassed, he would analyse and epitomize his findings and publish them in the "Medical Journal of Australia" or the Royal Adelaide Hospital's "Medical and Scientific Archives", which he founded and edited in 1921-48' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography').
Item #114265
Price (AUD):
$1,100.00