Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1415

JOHN AYRTON PARIS (1785-1856) Pharmacologia. Samuel Wood & Sons, R. Lockwood, S. B. Collins; and by Samuel S. Wood, Baltimore 1825 3rd American from the 6th London ed. Vol. I: xvi [17]-322 pp., col. front., fold. table; Vol. II: 376 pp. 23.6 cm.

Paris received his medical degree at Cambridge where he excelled at chemistry. He entered practice in London and in 1809 was elected physician to Westminster Hospital. In 1813 he was induced to move to Penzance in Cornwall where he practiced until 1817. Returning to London, he began a course of lectures on materia medica at the Windmill Street Medical School. He became so successful that the College of Physicians appointed him to give an annual course on the same subject. Paris was elected president of the College in 1844 and served as its chief officer until his death in 1856. The present work was first published at London in 1812 and met with such success that by the sixth edition "upwards of Ten Thousand copies of this work" (Advertisement, p. [v]) had been sold. Volume I is devoted to a lengthy historical introduction, the classes and actions of pharmaceutical preparations, and instructions in the theory and art of prescribing. Volume II covers the materia medica and, in it, Paris gives the first description of cancer caused by arsenic. Paris' book became very popular in the United States. It was edited by Ansel W. Ives (1787-1838), a New York physician, who took special care to revise those portions of the book devoted to the American materia medica.

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 2073 (3rd London ed., 1820)