Saunders, Richard [pseudonym]:

$3,500 · Offered by William Reese Company

POOR RICHARD IMPROVED: BEING AN ALMANACK AND EPHEMERIS OF THE MOTIONS OF THE SUN AND MOON...FOR THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1775.... A Poor Richard's almanac issued on the eve of the Revolutionary War. The volume contains an article on Amsterdam's Society for the Recovery of Drowned Persons, various anecdotes and recipes, and an account of Mr. Thomas Wood of Essex by the College of Physicians in London, detailing the extreme diet through which he "metamorphosed from a Monster to a Person of moderate Size," in part by abstaining from drinking any kind of liquid ("excepting what he has occasionally taken in the Form of Medicine, and two glasses and a half of Water, drank on the 9th of May, 1766") from 1765 to the time of the article's publication in 1771. Woodcuts illustrating the different signs of the zodiac accompany each month of the almanac. The illustration, "The Anatomy of Man's Body, as govern'd by the Twelve Constellations," appears on page [5].

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