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xxxvi, 304 pp; 3 plates. Recent 1/4-leather and marbled boards. Library ink stamp on title page, dedication leaf, and verso of each plate. Signature of former owner on half-title. Large water stain through p. viii (see photos), after which it diminishes quickly to a small stain in the upper blank corner and is gone by page xxiv. Untrimmed on all three fore edges (see photo). Very Good. First Edition. "The earliest English work on the stethoscope" (Bedford, The Evan Bedford Library of Cardiology 466). Garrison-Morton 11599: "This is the earliest English work on the stethoscope. . . includes the first English translation of Auenbrugger's book on percussion [Inventum Novum], selected sections from Laennec's book on auscultation [De auscultation médiate], and detailed reports from 39 cases from Forbes's practice in which auscultation and percussion were especially helpful." In his Preface, Forbes writes: "When I published, in 1821, my Translation of Laennec's invaluable work [De auscultation médiate], I had but a very imperfect practical acquaintance with Mediate Auscultation, as a means of diagnosis, and was altogether a stranger to the employment of Percussion. Since that time, however, I have made much use of both these measures, especially the first, in my public and private practice; and have thereby accumulated a very considerable mass of materials, illustrative of their employment; and have also acquired, I hope, a tolerable degree of facility in practically applying them to the diagnosis of diseases. It is to communicate to my medical brethren, some of the results of this experience, and thereby to recommend, in the most effective manner, the practice to their adoption, that I have undertaken the present task (Preface, pp. viii-ix)." Forbes writes of the three plates in his book: "These Plates are taken from M. Laennec's treatise [De auscultation médiate]; but they are introduced here as being exactly applicable to the state of the Chest described in Case xxix. p. 237 of this volume (p. 304)." Quoting P. J. Bishop about John Forbes and Laennec in his article "Reception of the Stethoscope and Laennec's Book", Thorax, vol. 36, 1081, pp. 487-492: "John Forbes's four editions of his English translation of Laennec's book produced between 1821 and 1834 were very important. Although he has been criticised in recent years for some of the great liberties he took with the original work, most contemporary reviewers thought (as he did) that he had considerably improved upon Laennec's original arrangement, and had made it more acceptable to English readers. . . . The first edition of Forbes's English translation appeared in 1821, and although he abridged parts of Laennec's work, omitted others, and condensed much, reducing it to about half its original length, he probably did as much as anyone to popularise the use of the stethoscope and to introduce Laennec's teaching to English readers. He undoubtedly underestimated seriously the great influence the stethoscope was to have on medicine, but obviously realised the immense importance of the book in general. In a letter to Laennec dated 13 September 1823 he was able to report that all 500 copies had been sold: a thing, as he said, almost unprecedented in a translation from a foreign work. On hearing from Laennec that his first French edition was also out of print, and that he was working on a second, he asked him to let him have an up-to-date account of his researches, and embodied these in his own Original Cases with Dissections which appeared in 1824 [offered here]. This work was both timely and important, and can be regarded as a stop-gap between his first English edition of 1821 and his second edition of 1827. . . . Forbes was far more than a mere translator, and his work of 1824 reveals that like Laennec he too had tried to correlate his stethoscopic observations with pathological findings" (pp. 488-489). Seller Inventory # 17027
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