An Essay of Health and Long Life.

London & Bath; Printed for George Strahan & J. Leake, 1725., 1725. Hard Cover. Fourth Edition. Octavo, pp. [4], xx, [24] Contents & catalogue, 232. Engraved head- and tail-pieces. Full polished calf with 5 raised bands; gilt ruled border to boards. Binding scuffed with small loss at spine tips, cracked upper joint. Ownership inscription of one Purcy Burrell to front paste-down above printed bookplate of" Henrietta Katherine Burrell: Castle Goring Library". Faint damp-stain to lower edge pp. 121-232 largely affecting margin; a little very minor scattered foxing and corner creasing. A Good copy. Physician George Cheyne (1673-1743) believed that it was the responsibility of each individual to look after their health and that to neglect this was sinful. His approach was informed by his own struggles with ill-health and obesity; he advocated moderation in diet and exercise and sustenance based upon white meat and vegetables, and he was an early adopter of the vegetarian cause. Castle Goring is a fabulous Grade I listed greco-roman/gothic pile in Worthing in West Sussex which was built for Sir Bysshe Shelley, 1st Baronet, and it was intended that his grandson, the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, live there but he famously died prematurely at the age of 29 before taking possession of the house. Mary Shelley inherited her husbands estate in 1835 and sold the house to Vice-Admiral Sir George Richard Brooke-Pechell who had been letting the house since 1825. His daughter, Henrietta Katherine Burrell (nee Brooke-Pechell) lived at the house with her husband Sir Percy Burrell from the 1880's onwards. Sir Percy Burrell was a conservative MP who was a Deputy Lieutenant and Justice of the Peace of Sussex. There is small irony that a book on health and well-being and the avoidance of overindulgence should be on the shelves of the library of the ancestral home of Percy Bysshe Shelley.