Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2020

JOHN SHAW BILLINGS (1838-1913) The national medical dictionary. Lea Brothers 1890 Vol. I: xlvi, 731 pp.; Vol. II: [4] 799 pp. 25.9 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 2018

Billings' purpose in the present work was to provide an up-to-date and concise definition of every English, French, German, and Italian medical term then in current use. He was assisted by eleven collaborators who helped with various aspects of compiling and verifying the terminology. The Preface notes that there were 84,844 words and phrases in the dictionary, as well as a series of useful tables for the practicing physician such as weights and measures, doses for selected medications, and antidotes for poisons. According to Fielding H. Garrison in John Shaw Billings; a memoir (New York, 1915), the dictionary "had only a "success of esteem," the principal reason being that a dictionary in more than one volume is always too unwieldy and unhandy for practical purposes" (p. 269).

Gift of John Martin, M.D.