A Hand-Book of Post-Mortem Examinations and of Morbid Anatomy

New York: William Wood & Co., 1872. First edition. 1872

PRACTICING PHYSICIANS' MANUAL FOR PERFORMING AUTOPSIES.

14 x 23.5 cm hardcover, red cloth binding, gilt title to spine, ink signature of "John A. Douglass/ Nov. 8, 1877" to front free endpaper, and top of title page, [i-iii], 376 pp. Wear to corners, spine faded, spine ends frayed, light browning to page edges, scattered marginal notations. Very good in custom archival mylar cover. This was Delafield's first important book, and was later rewritten and enlarged into "A Handbook of Pathological Anatomy and Histology" (1885) that became a textbook for medical education. The first edition, offered here, is divided into 4 parts: the first gives the method of performing autopsies on the bodies of adults and children; the second gives in detail the lesions which have been observed in each organ; the third gives the lesions which are found after deaths from general diseases, from violence, and from poisons (forensic cases); the fourth gives a short classification of tumors.

FRANCIS DELAFIELD (1841 - 1915) was an American physician, born in New York City. After earning his MD from the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University and further study abroad, he returned to New York and was appointed to the staff of Bellevue Hospital and to the chair of pathology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He served also as pathologist and attending physician to Roosevelt Hospital and as surgeon to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. He was the primary physician who was consulted following the shooting of United States President William McKinley in September 1901. He held membership in the New York Academy of Medicine, the Pathological Society, and the Association of American Physicians, becoming the first president of the latter organization in 1886. In 1948, in recognition for his career in medicine, the Francis Delafield Hospital opened as a cancer research center for Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.