[HYGIENE] [SOCIAL REFORM] First Report of the Committee on Public Hygiene of the American Medical Association. Read at the Annual Meeting, Held in Boston, May, 1849. With an Appendix (etc.)

Octavo, pp. 432-654 (complete as issued). Illustrated, with two folding charts. A good copy in the publisher's brown cloth, with a large chip to the top of the spine, affecting part of the stamped title. Ex-American Philosophical Society library, with a small label to the spine and their stamp on the title page, else unblemished internally. A presentation copy, SIGNED and INSCRIBED by Dr. Isaac Parrish, a prominent member of the committee and a leading Philadelphia doctor and social reformer, on the front free endpaper (possibly in a secretarial hand): "To Library Amer Philos. Society from Dr. Isaac Parrish, Member of the Committee." This extensive review of the condition of public health in American cities is an early example of organized public health advocacy in America. In-depth analyses of housing and sanitation infrastructure and hospital capacities are presented at length. The AMA had only been founded two years before this report, in 1847, and began publishing its "Transactions" in 1848 (still published today as the highly distinguished "JAMA"). Thus, this extensive report is one of the first large-scale studies produced by the AMA, and represents a significant record of American medicine during a period of rapid change on the frontier, rapidly crowding cities, and the limited capacity of small local governments and a weak federal government to meet the challenges of widespread disease outbreaks. A lengthy eulogy for Dr. Parrish by Dr. Samuel Jackson, presented to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, was published by Lippincott in 1853, and lists Parrish's many accomplishments. He was an early Abolitionist, as well as an advocate for prison reform and other difficult social questions of the day. He wrote at length on the problems and possible solutions to various sanitary conditions in his hometown of Philadelphia, and advocated for better sanitation infrastructure. OCLC holdings for this offprint are muddled, with some digital-only holdings difficult to distinguish from physical holdings. Nevertheless, only perhaps a dozen or so copies are retained by institutions, and presumably not a great many of these were printed. The first few volumes of the AMA's "Transactions" are quite scarce and desirable in commerce.…