Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1160

NOAH WEBSTER (1758-1843) A brief history of epidemic and pestilential diseases. Printed by Hudson & Goodwin 1799 Vol.I: xii, 340 (misnumbered 348) pp.; Vol. II: [4] 352 pp. Copy 1: Vol. I: 21.2 cm.; Vol. II: 21.4 cm. Modern morocco. Copy 2: 21.7 cm.

An individual of many talents and accomplishments, Webster is perhaps best known today as a lexicographer although he was also a skilled educational and political writer as well as a newspaper editor. Webster studied at Yale and became a teacher after graduation because he could not afford to continue his studies. However, he did obtain his law degree by studying part-time once he became a teacher. In 1782 he began to write a series of textbooks under the title A grammatical institute of the English language which consisted of a speller (1783), a grammar (1784), and a reader (1785). All were successful but the speller was a phenomenal seller and sold nearly a million copies a year in the late nineteenth century. In order to protect the rights to his many publications, Webster crusaded actively for the establishment of copyright laws and played a key role in getting state laws passed in the 1780s and a federal law in 1790. In 1800 he began work on three dictionaries, which occupied him for much of the remainder of his life. A compendious dictionary of the English language (1806), A dictionary . . . for the use of common schools (1807), and his well-known American dictionary of the English language (1828). Webster had a keen interest in medicine throughout his life and for a number of years was especially interested in epidemiology. This work is the first American work on general epidemiology. It was Webster's purpose to examine all existing knowledge related to epidemics and pestilences that had occurred through the recorded history of the world in order to attempt to find some common causative factor. In the first volume, he gives the views of various authorities on plagues and epidemics and presents his historical investigation which begins with Biblical events and ends in 1799. In the second volume, he presents bills of mortality for the past two centuries and continues on to discuss the relationships of all the phenomena related to epidemic diseases as well as presenting his views on contagion, infection, and the role of preventive medicine in pestilential diseases. Webster concluded that it was the insensible qualities of the atmosphere that gave fevers their pestilential quality.

Cited references: Austin 2023; Cushing W92

Gift of John Martin, M.D.