The principles and practice of medicine

New York: Appleton, 1892. FIRST EDITION, SECOND ISSUE. Finely bound in full morocco, gilt lettering and decorations on spine, a very fine copy belonging to Robert Saundby, president of the Edinburgh Royal Medical Society, with his bookplate. With an autographed letter tipped into the book, written by Osler, concerning a lecture by Ronald Ross (Nobel Prize winner for medicine, 1902) on maleria in Greece. Osler invites Saundby to the lecture and a dinner to be held prior to the lecture. First edition, second issue, with Plato’s Gorgias corrected on the verso of the third leaf. Osler’s textbook was considered the best English work on medicine of its time, and became a standard text for students and practitioners in every country and language in the world. It provided a systematized text on internal medicine as well as relevant information from great advances in the laboratory sciences, particularly bacteriology. The chapters describe specific diseases by systems, a pattern since followed by most textbooks.

Osler (1849-1919) was a clinician, pathologist, and historian of medicine. His warm and charming personality, his great skill as a physician, his innovative structuring of the medical school curriculum, and his many significant writings have made him the most important figure of his time in both English and North American medicine.

Handwritten letters by Osler and very scarce and rare.

Garrison & Morton, 2231; Golden & Roland, Sir William Osler, an Annotated Bibliography, 1375; Lilly Library, Notable Medical Books, 233; Norman, One Hundred Books Famous in Medicine, 82.