About this Item
Manuscript notebook. Small quarto (6½" x 7¾"). Contains 85 manuscript pages written in ink on the rectos and versos, in two separately paginated parts. Each part (or "volume") consists of two lectures: Lecture 4 - Mortification (pp. 1-12) and Lecture 5 - Wounds (pp. 13-42); [Lecture 6] - Wounds, continued (pp. [2], 1-24) and Lecture 7: Ulcers (pp. 24-42). Original marbled paper wrappers, with a bookseller's printed paper titling label: "Sold by T. Desilver, 220, Market, and 152 South 6th St." mounted on front cover. The label is titled in manuscript: "Notes on Surgery, Volume 3d - per Silas C. Cook . ." Laid-in is a folded octavo sheet titled: "Recipe for Pills," which lists the ingredients of cough and digestive pills. One page in the notebook also contains a recipe for "Cathartics Emetic." The wrapper is torn at head of spine with some loss, spine and left edge of front cover mended with old strips of clear tape, minor toning and scattered short tears and nicks, very good overall. A remarkable notebook documenting early American diagnosis and treatments of "mortification" (defined as "the certain destruction or death of any part [of the body]"); and of multiple types of wounds, including: punctured, lacerated, and penetrating wounds; wounds of the face and abdomen, etc., as well as gun shot wounds. Also included is a final lecture on ulcers. Celebrated today as the "Father of American Surgery," Philip Syng Physick was among the few doctors who remained in Philadelphia to care for the sick during the city's devastating Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. A surgeon at Pennsylvania Hospital (1784-1861) and professor of surgery at the University of Pennsylvania, Physick was one of the most sought-after medical lecturers of the 19th century. His lectures prepared a generation of surgeons for service throughout America, including Dr. Silas Cook. Born in 1791, Silas Cook was raised in Morristown, New Jersey and pursued his medical studies under the guidance of Dr. Lewis Condit, a leading Morris County physician. He attended Physick's medical lectures at the University of Pennsylvania during the winters of 1812 and 1813. Licensed to practice in 1813, he conducted a successful practice throughout New Jersey until 1842. From 1842 until 1857, he was located at Easton, Pennsylvania, where he was rated as one of Easton's most skillful and successful physicians. In 1857 he returned to Hackettstown, New Jersey, and continued in practice until his death in 1873. An important notebook documenting contemporary surgical procedures and the education of an early American doctor in the early 19th Century.
Seller Inventory # 550272
Contact seller
Report this item
