Collection of 22 Medical Offprints Bound in a Single Volume. Includes: Prostitution: Personal Observations of Police Methods of Dealing with Prostitution in Germany. Also includes: Soliloquy of a Fallen Woman or The Lament over Virtue Lost.

Collection of 22 medical offprints bound in a single volume. de Forest is an important figure in the history of fingerprinting. As a surgeon for the New York City Police Department from 1902 to 1912, de Forest recommended fingerprinting as a means of preventing potential civil service employees from having others take their exams for them. de Forests recommendation led to the first fingerprint file in the United States and the first use of fingerprinting by a U.S. government agency. The use of fingerprinting for criminal identification began when the New York State Prison adopted the system. Among the titles in this collection are Police Methods of Dealing with Prostitution in Germany, Obstetric Hemorrhages and Their Treatment, The Care of the Infant, Motor-Boat Fractures, Surgery of the Thoracic Duct, and Soliloquy of a Fallen Woman. Ostensibly, these offprints were sent to Evalyn Lee Messenger, who had them bound in a functional red buckram binding by New York bookbinder H. Kaufman. Two of the offprints are inscribed in ink to Messenger and signed by de Forest. Another contains this inscription in ink: With the regards of henry P. de Forest April 19, 1908. In two other offprints are compliments slips signed by de Forest. The collection, then, contains 5 signatures of de Forest. On one offprint are Messengers initials in ink: E.L.M. The book also has interest for historians of the bookplate. de Forest was also a designer of bookplates. Among those he completed was The Story of Cornell. In the Fulton Patriot of May 7, 1930, both de Forest and Messenger were given credit for helping design the bookplate for the City of Fulton, New York. Messengers bookplate is inside the front cover of this collection, and de Forests bookplate is facing it on the front free endpaper. Both are very interestingly designed, but Messengers is the more fascinating and can often be found in online postings of impressive bookplates. The back blank cover of one of the offprints has an edge chip. The book is Very Good. …