Hints for the Treatment of the Principal Diseases of Infancy and Childhood, Adapted to the Use of Parents

Edinburgh: George Ramsay and Company, 1813. Second edition.

1813 ADVICE TO PARENTS ON THE TREATMENT OF THEIR SICK CHILD--SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY.

8 1/2 inches tall hardcover, full leather binding, gilt rulings to covers, red leater label with gilt title to spine, marbled endpapers, bookplate of F. D. Emery, M.D. to front paste-down, inscribed and signed by author on ffep: "For the Revd Mr Birch with Dr Hamilton's best respects, Edinburgh, Aug 22, 1813". i-x, 190 pp. Cover edges, corners, and spine rubbed, light foxing to preliminary pages, light browning to text page edges. Binding tight, pages clean and unmarked, very good in custon archival mylar cover. The PREFACE emphasizes that the author has based his text on extensive personal experience, and has presented it in a format appropriate for the use of parents: "The scientific reader will find the practical precepts different, in many respects, from established doctrines. They are the result of the attention which the author has bestowed, for above twenty years, on those complaints and he trusts, with confidence, that the experience of every practitioner who adopts them will confirm their utility."

JAMES HAMILTON (1767–1839), son of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh (in part under his father). He also studied at Paris, Leiden and the University of St Andrews receiving his MD from the latter in 1792. In 1800, he succeeded his father as professor of midwifery at the University of Edinburgh, and in 1808 he published Hints for the Treatment of the Principal Diseases of Infancy and Childhood adapted for the use of Parents, a second edition of which appeared four years later (offered here). In 1810 he was elected a member of the Aesculapian Club, and in 1824, he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.