Anderson trained at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, emigrated to America in 1820 and, after delivering a series of anatomical lectures in New York under the patronage of Valentine Mott, became affiliated with the Vermont Academy of Medicine (see Kelly, American Medical Biographies,1920). This work, intended to supplement his anatomical lectures, is notable for the nine anatomical plates, all engraved by A.B. [Asher Brown] Durand, including four engraved from Durand's original illustrations. These are quite early works by Durand, who achieved his first prominence as the engraver of John Trumbull's edition of the Declaration of Independence (1823) and later great renown as a landscape painter of the Hudson River School.