Detailed monograph on the venom glands of deadly serpents, with a detailed engraved plate, published as an offprint of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Detailed monograph on the venom glands of deadly serpents, with a detailed engraved plate, published as an offprint of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Sir Everard Home (1756-1832) was a surgeon and author of over 100 Royal Society papers, efforts which won him the prestigious Copley medal in 1807. Home wrote primarily on surgery and the challenges associated with post-operative infection. He also dabbled in natural history subjects (of which this offprint is one such example) and was elected keeper and a trustee of the Hunterian Museum in 1817. The plate in this offprint 'is taken from a preparation in the Hunterian Museum'.

Home was a problematic individual, described in the Dictionary of National Biography as 'vain, overbearing, and violent in language'. His reputation was seriously damaged by charges of plagiarising the work of his brother-in-law, the surgeon John Hunter (allegations exacerbated by Home's decision to destroy Hunter's papers after retaining them for some thirty years).

Such offprints, where they exist, are recognised as the original editions since they normally precede the journal printing and were typically done in very limited numbers for the author to distribute.