Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1117

JOHN WARREN (1753-1815) A view of the mercurial practice in febrile diseases. T. B. Wait 1813 [2] viii, 187 pp. 23.9 cm.

Warren, father of the noted John Collins Warren (see No. 1340 ff.), was born on a farm in Roxbury, Massachusetts near Boston. He graduated from Harvard in 1771 and then studied medicine for two years with his brother, Joseph (1741-1775), who was killed early in the Revolutionary War at Bunker Hill. After completing his medical studies, Warren entered practice in Salem, Massachusetts where he soon established a thriving practice. He served as a surgeon during the Revolutionary War and accompanied the Continental Army to New York and New Jersey where he served until 1779. He then returned to Boston to direct its military hospital until the close of the war. After Warren gave a series of successful anatomical lectures in Boston just after the war, the Harvard Corporation asked him to submit a plan for the formation of a medical school. His plan was accepted and he was appointed the first professor of anatomy and surgery at the Harvard Medical School in 1783. Active in medical affairs as well as in teaching, Warren was a founding member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and served as its president from 1804 until his death. Warren's treatise on the use of mercury in febrile diseases is comprehensive and includes epidemic fevers, typhus, yellow fever, smallpox, measles, throat distemper, and croup. He accepts the value of mercury in treating many diseases and recognizes its potency as well as its potential limitations. He states that "Mercury has been very aptly denominated the Sampson of the Materia Medica" (p. 2) and goes on to note that even so, its method of action and possible adverse effects merit the use of caution in its administration. Warren includes not only case histories from his own experience but the opinions and experiences of many other well-known physicians of his day. The book is inscribed by Warren to "Daniel Greenleaf from his highly valued friend."

See Related Record(s): 1340

Cited references: Austin 1999

Gift of John Martin, M.D.