Pediatric X-Ray Diagnosis

Chicago: Year Book Publishers, 1945. First edition.

FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST TEXTBOOK ON PEDIATRIC RADIOLOGY.

Ten inches tall hardcover, green cloth binding, gilt title to spine, i-xxii, 838 pp. 710 figures in text. Light edgewear to covers, text unmarked. Very good in custom archival mylar cover.

JOHN PATRICK CAFFEY (1895 – 1978) was an American pediatrician and radiologist who was one of the founders of pediatric radiology. He was the first to describe shaken baby syndrome, infantile cortical hyperostosis, and Kenny-Caffey syndrome. Caffey interned at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis before traveling to postwar Europe in 1920, working with the American Red Cross and American Relief Administration in Serbia, Poland and Russia. He returned to the United States in 1923, and by 1929 was appointed head of radiology at Babies Hospital, New York City, in 1929. Pediatric radiology would go on to become his life's work, and he would receive radiographs mailed from across North America for his expert opinion. In 1945, he published Pediatric X-Ray Diagnosis, the first definitive textbook on the topic. Caffey was the first to describe what is now known as shaken baby syndrome with a 1946 article on the association between long bone fractures and subdural hematomas in infants. He also provided the first description of infantile cortical hyperostosis, also known as Caffey's disease. He retired from Babies Hospital in 1960 and joined the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in 1963 as a radiologist and a professor at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Caffey was a founding member of the Society for Pediatric Radiology, and he received the American Medical Association's Jacobi Award; the American Pediatric Society's John Howland Award; and the American College of Radiology's Gold Medal.