A Demonstration of the Nerves of the Human Body was published by author Joseph Swan in 1830. The images in the volume were completed by E. West and engraved by J. Stewart.
Joseph Swan
Joseph Swan was born in 1791, in Lincolnshire, to father Henry Swan and mother Ann Tomlinson. A 1904 volume on Lincolnshire Pedigrees listed the Swan family of Lincolnshire. Joseph Swan’s father, Henry, was born in c.1748, was at different times Alderman and Mayor of Lincoln, and was listed as a surgeon. Henry’s father (Joseph’s grandfather) was Henry Swan Sr., who was born in 1715, also a surgeon. Henry Sr.’s father (Joseph’s great-grandfather) was born in Glasgow in 1687, and his will from 1755 noted that he was also a surgeon.
Joseph Swan served an apprenticeship to his father in Lincoln, but later went to London to complete his training at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. He was a pupil of Henry Cline, and became a friend of Astley Cooper. He returned to Lincoln in 1814 to work as Surgeon at the Country Hospital. In 1827, he moved again to Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, where he converted a room into a dissecting room to do his own private research. He was elected as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1831, and became a fellow in 1843.
In 1861, the census shows that Joseph Swan was living in 4 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, working as a surgeon. He was aged 69, and unmarried, living with three servants. As of 1871, Joseph Swan was at the same address but no longer working as a surgeon, listed instead as a landowner.