Description of the Distinct, Confluent, and Innoculated Small Pox, Varioloid Disease, Cow Pox, and Chicken Pox. Illustrated by Thirteen Plates. (thirteen stipple engravings with hand-coloring)

Fisher, John Dix · Boston

Author

Fisher, John Dix

Date

1829

Place

Boston

Publisher

Wells and Lilly

Language

English

Binding

Folio. Original drab paper-covered boards, rebacked in modern brown cloth, gilt stamped title, new endpapers. Boards bumped, scuffed, and soiled, edges and corners worn. Minor occasional foxing and thumb-soiling. J.S. Hurd hand written on upper right of front cover. Faintly stamped on front cover " Library Cornell University Medical College New York City"

Format

[A rare early American medical work by John Dix Fisher, at the time a fairly recent graduate of the Harvard Medical School. Fisher had just returned from Paris, where he had been studying infectious diseases with various French doctors, and the materials used for the present work were collected by Fisher during his time overseas. It is a landmark work in American medicine for its confirmation that small pox and chicken pox are indeed separate diseases. The prominent feature of the work are the thirteen stipple-engraved plates featuring the "moderate severity" of the effects of the various diseases covered in the book. The plates show the effects of small pox on both inoculated and uninoculated patients. Fisher dedicated the work to Dr. James Jackson, an early American advocate of vaccination. According to Fisher's note at the beginning of the text: "The work which I now have the honour to dedicate to you owes its origin to some observations which you had occasion to make during the course of lectures delivered at the Medical College of Harvard University in the winter of 1824-5. You there spoke particularly of the difficulties commonly experienced in distinguishing the variolous from other eruptive diseases, and mentioned it as a matter of regret that the profession were not possessed of a series of coloured engravings illustrative of the progress of that disorder. With the hope of being able to contribute some assistance to the labours of my medical brethren, I have undertaken to supply this deficiency. The paintings from which the plates in this volume are engraved...were made in the hospitals of Paris during the years 1825 and 1826, a period at which the variolous disease prevailed epidemically in that city. They were executed by a French artist under my own immediate direction, and were all begun and finished at the bed-side of the patients from whom they were taken." The work is rather rare, mainly due to a fire that broke out at the publisher's warehouse that consumed much of this first edition. OCLC indicates four physical copies over four records, at the British Library, the University of Toronto, the State Library in Berlin, and the Stanford Medical Library, but more (though an indeterminate amount of) physical copies are catalogued in the digital book records. In any case, the book is rare in the market, and especially interesting for its large and detailed engravings. WELLCOME III, p.29. WHITCOMB 3288. SHOEMAKER 38579. OCLC 560800668, 977662075, 249461588, 1078514201. CUSHING F160. HEIRS TO HIPPOCRATES 1571 (1834 ed).] The William Reece Company

Category

Science & Medicine

Record

S.I. 4015

Condition

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