Outlines of the chief camp diseases of the United States armies as observed during the present war. 

Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1863. FIRST EDITION. Later half-cloth and marbled boards. An excellent copy with the small blindstamp of West Virginia University. First edition, the variant printing in which the dedication to W.A. Hammond appearing on p. [v] has been replaced by a note indicating corrections to several tables. Written to assist physicians who were not familiar with diseases common to the army, Woodward reports on his own findings and observations of diseases that affected the military. Some of these include malaria, “crowd poisoning” (which appears to be any disease occasioned or aggravated by overcrowding, especially due to lack of ventilation), and scorbutic taint which refers to scurvy, the cause of which was well understood by 1863 but the army had not solved the logistical problem of supplying soldiers with vegetables and fruits at remote posts. Other common ailments include malarial fevers, jaundice, diarrhea, acute enteritis, dysentery, measles, catarrh, pneumonia, and pseudo-rheumatic affections, and more. “Camp measles” may have been a fungal infection derived from musty straw., and “Chickhominy fever,” mentioned on p. 88, may have been malaria, typhoid or even dengue fever. The author’s intention was to “seize upon the leading phenomena of those diseases which are most characteristic, present features variously transformed from those worn by the ordinary affections of civil life, and which, from the vast frequency with which they have occurred, and are occurring, are of the greatest importance to the military surgeon.” This edition includes a thoughtful preface in which the author admits he may not have the most universal information due to his dedication to the American army but acknowledges the importance of publishing what he did personally experience involving camp diseases.  

Woodward (1833-1884) was a surgeon from Philadelphia. In 1861 he enlisted and served for a year as a surgeon with the Army of the Potomac after which he was assigned to the office of the surgeon general in Washington. He was president of the American Medical Association in 1882 and also published numerous articles on microscopy, photomicrography, cancer and other subjects. He is well known as the physician who performed the autopsies of both Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth and attended to President Garfield after he was shot. According to a website run by the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Woodward was the first scientist to establish photomicrography as a tool for both scientific and medical investigations.

Garrison & Morton 7738; Heirs of Hippocrates 1986.