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vi, [7]- 69 pp; 1 leaf of publisher's ads. Original cloth. Chipped at top of spine. Small tears along joints. Large bookplate of "Mellin's Food Library Doliber-Goodale & Co." on the front pastedown (see photo), and the ink stamp of Doliber, Goodale & Co. on the front flyleaf. Lightly foxed. Very Good. First American Edition. Originally published in 1854 in London. West's name did not appear on the title page of either the London 1854 edition or this New York 1855 edition. His name first appeared on the title page of the London 1860 second edition, in which West wrote: "The former edition of this little book was published anonymously. I have now affixed my name to it, in accordance with the wish of my publishers, and of many other friends of the Children's Hospital, who are of opinion that I shall thus better promote the objects for which it was written." West's "little book is published for the benefit of the HOSPITAL FOR SICK CHILDREN which was opened in the year 1851 in Great Ormond Street, Queen Square. It was the first hospital for children ever established in this country" (Preface). Charles Dickens took a great interest in this hospital: "Dickens visited the hospital during its first weeks of operation. The writer was so moved by what he saw that he and an assistant named Henry Morley composed an essay about the sick children recuperating there, entitled 'Drooping Buds' . . . in the April 3, 1852 issue of Household Words. . . . Dickens gave the hospital trustees permission to reprint the essay and distribute it to potential donors as a publicity tool. . . . On Feb. 9, 1858, the Great Ormond Street trustees asked Charles Dickens to chair a 'festival benefit'. . . . Dickens's sterling celebrity . . . attracted a crowd of potential donors. . . . Always a brilliant speaker and actor . . ., Dickens delivered a rousing speech on the plight of ill children and the need to support the children's hospital. . . . the author threw in a reading of his beloved 'A Christmas Carol.' The speech raised more than £3,000 (. . . almost $400,000 in 2016) for the hospital. . . . . He also wrote about the Great Ormond Street Hospital in his collection of essays 'The Uncommercial Traveler' (1860), in an essay entitled 'From Cradle to Grave,' which ran in Feb. 1, 1862 issue . . . All the Year Round, and in his last complete novel 'Our Mutual Friend' (1865). . . . Charles West wrote, 'Dickens, the children's friend, first set [the hospital] on her legs and helped her to run alone' (Howard Markel, "Was Charles Dickens the first celebrity medical spokesman?"). West's "lectures on the diseases of children were published in the Medical Gazette in 1847 and later as a book which saw seven English editions and was translated into several European languages and Arabic. This work made West famous as the father of British paediatrics. . . . In the 1840s West tried unsuccessfully to convert the Waterloo Road Dispensary to a children's hospital. In 1849 50 he investigated the facilities for treating children at other London hospitals and wrote to all the children's hospitals on the continent. He personally visited every London physician to canvass support for a children's hospital. . . . On 19 March 1851 . . . the Children's Hospital was founded and two weeks later the house at 49 Great Ormond Street, formerly the home of Queen Anne's physician, Richard Mead, was obtained for the hospital. West was its first physician and wrote the early reports. He lectured on children's diseases and wrote a little manual on nursing sick children [offered here] which was published for the benefit of the hospital" (N. G. Coley in the Oxford DNB). Charles West also wrote these books on pediatrics: Lectures on the Diseases of Infancy and Childhood (1848); On Some Disorders of the Nervous System in Childhood (1871); On Hospital Organisation: with Special Reference to the Organisation of Hospitals for Children (1877); The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases (1885).
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