Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 2094

GEORGE HENRY FOX (1846-1937) Photographic illustrations of skin diseases. E. B. Treat 1880 102 pp., [48] leaves of col. plates. 29.7 cm.

Fox received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1869 and then completed a one year internship in Philadelphia. He spent the following three years studying in London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin. Some of the leading physicians with whom he studied were Jonathan Hutchinson (see No. 1946 ff.), Virchow (see No. 1890 ff.), Isidor Neumann (1832-1906), and Ferdinand Hebra (1816-1880). Hebra so inspired him that Fox decided to specialize in dermatology. He returned to New York to practice and teach and eventually became professor of dermatology at Columbia University where he served for some twenty-six years. One of the pioneers of American dermatology, Fox was a founding member of the American Dermatological Association. The present work was among the early atlases which used photographs to illustrate skin diseases but it can not claim to be the first. Earlier works include those by Louis Philippe Alfred Hardy (1811-1893) who in 1867 had published Clinique photographique de l'hôpital Saint Louis at Paris and Howard F. Damon (1833-1884), who published Photographs of skin diseases taken from life at Boston in 1870. It was Fox's aim "to represent in this series nearly all of the rare as well as the common affections of the skin, with the exception of the Syphilodermata" (Preface). He included over fifty different skin diseases and with each presented a brief history emphasizing the diagnostic characteristics of the disease, including recommendations for treatment. The most recent advances of that day in printing and photography were utilized in preparing the book and the illustrations have been printed directly on each page. Fox employed a skilled artist, formerly a physician, to hand color each of the plates so they would be as life-like as possible.

See Related Record(s): 1946 1890

Cited references: Garrison-Morton 3996

Gift of John Martin, M.D.