Churchill, Fleetwood, editor

Essays on the Puerperal Fever and Other Diseases Peculiar to Women: Selected From the Writings of British Authors Previous to the Close of the Eighteenth Century; edited by Fleetwood Churchill [provenance: Charles D. Meigs]

London: Sydenham Society, 1848. Hardcover. viii, 552, 11 p.; 23 cm. Publisher's black cloth with emblem in gilt on both boards within blind-stamped decoration. Top page edges gilt. Small yellow bookbinder's label on back fixed endpaper of Westleys & Co., London. The Sydenham Society published medical works from 1844 to 1857. Yellow endpapers. Series title page has inscription by former owner, "Ch. D. Meigs M. D. 1850," and red oval stamp of subsequent owner, the Preston Retreat Library. Inscription on front fixed endpaper indicates more recent ownership by doctors W. Robert Penman and Dorothy I. Lansing. Charles D. Meigs (1792-1868) was an American doctor who was a professor of obstetrics at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia from 1841 to 1861, during which period he acquired this book. He is best remembered today for dismissing the idea that doctors could transmit disease to their patients if they failed to wash their hands. A doctor was a gentleman, and "a gentleman's hands are clean," he declared. There are occasional ink and pencil marginal notations, some or all of which may be by Meigs. Presumably after his death in 1861, the book became part of the library at the Preston Retreat, a hospital for poor women that opened in Philadelphia in 1866. In Fair Condition: lacking spine; residue on boards from former tape repair; hinges are weak; text block separating; two signatures detached but present. Fair. Item #007675

Price: $185.00