Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1242

DAVID HOSACK (1769-1835) Observations on the laws governing the communication of contagious diseases, and the means of arresting their progress. Van Winkle and Wiley 1815 84 pp. 26.8 cm.

Hosack, a native of New York City and one of its leading practitioners, began his collegiate education at Columbia College in 1786 and graduated from Princeton in 1789. He started his medical studies with Richard Bayley (1745-1801), a New York surgeon, in 1788 and completed his degree at the University of Pennsylvania in 1791. He entered private practice for a short time after graduation and then went to Europe for two years additional postgraduate study at Edinburgh and London. Soon after his return to New York City, Hosack was appointed professor of botany and materia medica in the newly established College of Physicians and Surgeons and remained there, serving in several different chairs, until 1826. At that time, he resigned to serve as professor of medicine at the short-lived Rutgers Medical College. The present work is the first appearance of this discourse in book form. Hosack initially read it at a meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society of New York on June 9, 1814 and it was also published in the Society's Transactions in 1815 (Vol. I, pp. [201]-280). Considered to be one of Hosack's most important contributions, the Observations were originally drawn up in June 1812, in a letter addressed to Dr. Chisholm, and "were intended as an answer to his strictures on my (Hosack's) classification of contagious diseases" (p. 3). Based on earlier attempts to classify contagious diseases, he included interesting historical accounts as well as conclusions he reached from his own experience and that of his colleagues. The latter half of the work contains notes which comprise correspondence on the subject with Colin Chisholm (1755-1825), Alire Raffeneau-Delile (1755-1850), Bard (see No. 1050), Samuel S. Smith (1750-1819), Caspar Wistar (see No. 1175), and Sir Gilbert Blane (1749-1834). The University of Iowa Libraries' copy is an author's presentation copy for Wm. Henry, M.D.

See Related Record(s): 1050 1175

Cited references: Austin 972; Cushing H465

Gift of John Martin, M.D.