Beschreibung:

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894). The contagiousness of puerperal fever . [Offprint from The New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery I (1842-1843)]. [Boston, 1844?]. 8 o (236 x 137 mm). 1-3 4 4 2 . 14 leaves, paginated [1]-28. Caption title. (Slight vertical crease from former folding). Original buff printed wrappers (slight staining to upper wrapper). Fitted morocco-backed folding case. FIRST EDITION, the very rare offprint of Holmes' first article on puerperal fever, "one of the greatest American contributions to medicine" (Grolier Medicine ). In this brief article, first presented in 1843 as a paper read to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, Holmes demonstrated the contagious nature of childbed or puerperal fever, showing that it was carried from bed to bed by attending physicians. "Although not an obstetrician, Holmes, who later taught at the Harvard Medical School, amassed considerable evidence for his thesis and wrote with clear argument, drawing both on his own knowledge of the disease and on the observations and writings of others" (op. cit.). Holmes not only advised practitioners to "perform thorough ablutions" including washing their hands in calcium chloride, and to change their clothes after treating cases of puerperal fever or performing postmortems, but he cautioned them to wait at least 24 hours before performing any obstetrical duties. His paper is scholarly in tone and exemplary in its extensive and careful citing of sources -- for the nature of childbed fever had already been widely suspected. (Holmes was the first, for example, to acknowledge the discoveries of Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen, who had already warned of the contagious nature of the disease in his 1795 Treatise on the epidemic puerperal fever of Aberdeen ). He concludes his detailed recommendations for prevention of the illness in no uncertain terms: "Whatever indulgence may be granted to those who have heretofore been the ignorant causes of so much misery, the time has come when the existence of a private pestilence in the sphere of a single physician should be looked upon not as a misfortune but a crime" (p. 28). Like Semmelweis, of whose work Holmes was unaware, Holmes encountered heated opposition to his thesis and outright ridicule from the medical establishment, which sadly hindered the widespread application of his suggestions for years to come. The present offprint of Holmes's article, originally printed in the April 1843 issue of the short-lived New England Quarterly Journal of Medicine and Surgery , which folded after a year, was listed in Wiley and Putnam's literary newsletter of May 1844, cited in BAL, as having been published in April 1844. It is EXTREMELY RARE. In the introduction to his 1855 expanded edition of the paper (see following lot), Holmes stated that "the few copies [he] had struck off separately were soon lost sight of among the friends to whom they were sent". This is the first copy to appear at auction in the past half-century or more. BAL 8738; Grolier American 50; Garrison-Morton 6274 (journal); Heirs of Hippocrates 1744 (journal); Grolier Medicine 72B; Osler 2989; PMM 316a (journal); Waller 6847 (journal); Norman 1088.