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London, The Scientific Press, Limited, 1897. Octavo, xvi, 307 pages with 16 illustrations plus 6 pages of plates. Brown cloth lettered in gilt on the spine and front cover; cloth lightly rubbed and flecked; an excellent copy. A contemporary small advertising leaflet for chloroform is loosely inserted. The head of the half-title page is signed in ink by the author (albeit the 'h' and the 'N' are barely visible). Scottish-born Alexander Disney Leith Napier (1854-1926) emigrated to South Australia in 1896 to take up the position of 'Senior Surgeon, and Surgeon in Charge of Gynaecological Cases, and Lecturer in Clinical Surgery and on Gynaecology, General Hospital, Adelaide'. A short article in the Melbourne newspaper, 'The Age', on 10 June 1896 is worth quoting in full: 'The London correspondent of the Adelaide "Advertiser" reports that Dr. Leith Napier, who, consequent on the strike of the honorary medical and surgical staff of the Adelaide Hospital, has been appointed resident surgeon and gynaecologist at the hospital, is relinquishing a London practice worth £2000 a year to take the appointment, in the hope that his wife's health may be benefitted by residence in South Australia. He has obtained permission to establish a consulting practice in Adelaide in connection with the hospital appointment. Dr. Napier, who is 42, is a descendant of Sir Chas. Jas. Napier, the conqueror of Scinde, who was offered the post of Governor of South Australia 60 years ago, but declined it because the Imperial Government refused to grant a military establishment for the colony. Dr. Napier is a graduate of Aberdeen University, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, holds many hospital appointments in London, is vice-president of the British Gynaecological Society and editor of the "Gynaecological Journal". When asked whether he was nervous at the prospect of facing the irate profession in Adelaide, he replied with a laugh:- "I hope I am old enough and ugly enough to take care of myself, and really from the little I know of the dispute I incline to hope it may all have blown over before myself and Dr. Buckley reach Adelaide. If not, we shall try to help in every way towards peace. Looked at through our spectacles from this side, the whole affair doesn't seem the kind of thing over which the profession in two hemispheres need raise Cain"'. As it happens, within months of his arrival, in September 1896, he was accused of incompetence by 'Professor Archibald Watson, Pathologist, Honorary Consulting Surgeon and sole remaining University teacher at the hospital . Watson accused Napier of incompetence . Napier complained to the Board of the Hospital, alleging that Watson had misrepresented the facts when he conducted the post-mortem on the patient and that he was disloyal to the hospital. The Board found the complaint proved and invited Watson to resign; he declined and was dismissed' (R.G. Elmslie: '"Mrs L.'s case": a celebrated South Australian surgical case'. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery, October 1991 [quotes taken from the abstract]). An article about the appointment in the Adelaide newspaper, 'The Advertiser', on 9 June 1896 highlights the importance of Napier as 'a specialist in the diseases of women. We are assured by such authorities as Dr. Cullingworth of St. Thomas's and Dr. Perry of Guy's that Dr. Napier will be unquestionably one of the biggest men - if not actually the biggest man - in his own line in Australia'. Dr Napier is quoted in the article as stating 'I have made several conditions with the South Australian Government. Without them I couldn't possibly have accepted the appointment. You might make it dear that I am not going out in a spirit of rivalry to any one. It is not my intention to practice [sic] generally either whilst at the hospital or after leaving it. l am going in, outside my hospital work, purely for specialising in the obscurer diseases of women, and I retain the right, whilst in the G.
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