1863 Civil War Medical Book Surgical Operations Amputation Gunshot Wounds  For Sale

1863 Civil War Medical Book Surgical Operations Amputation Gunshot Wounds 
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1863 Civil War Medical Book Surgical Operations Amputation Gunshot Wounds :
$500.00

A Handbook of Surgical Operations by Stephen Smith. Published in 1863 by Bailliere Brothers, New York. In original stiff paper covers. Very good condition. Solid in every way and very serviceable.
This 1863 surgical manual was one of the go to text issued to the Union Army during the War. Authorized by the Surgeon General for issuance and utilized in field and post hospitals.
Outlining all manner of surgical procedures and heavily illustrated with woodcuts showing surgical tools and procedures from the era.
Dr. Stephen Smith (1823–1922), Academy Fellow for 68 years, had a career as a Bellevue Hospital surgeon and a professor of surgery and anatomy at Bellevue Hospital Medical College and New York University. He wrote a field manual for Civil War army surgeons, was Health Commissioner of New York from 1868 to 1875, and was a founder of the American Public Health Association and its first president. Through his work the condition of the city, the state, and the nation markedly improved by the application of public health regulations for the common good.Stephen Smith was born on a farm in Skaneateles, New York, on February 19, 1823, the son of a cavalry officer in the Revolutionary War and his wife. [1] He first studied medicine at Geneva Medical College, where a fellow student was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman medical school graduate in the United States. He left Geneva for Buffalo Medical College and then relocated to New York City, where he finally received his medical degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1850. Smith completed his residency at Bellevue Hospital and became an attending surgeon there in 1854; the following year he was elected a NYAM Fellow. He served on the faculty of Bellevue Hospital Medical College from its founding in 1861 until 1874, when he joined the faculty in the medical department of New York University.In addition to his work as a practicing physician and surgeon, Smith shared the editorial responsibilities for the New York Journal of Medicine with NYAM luminary Dr. Samuel Smith Purple and assumed the editorship completely when Purple retired in 1857. The journal changed its name to the American Medical Times three years later, and Smith continued as its editor until 1864. [2]Mid-nineteenth-century New York City was subject to recurring outbreaks of deadly diseases. As Smith later proclaimed, “The unsanitary condition of the city prior to 1866 cannot be described so that an audience of today can fully appreciate the reality. Nuisances dangerous to life and detrimental to health existed everywhere.” [3] Smith used his investigative skill and editorial position to campaign for wide-ranging reforms, including sanitary inspections, street cleaning, garbage collection, and the regulation of tenement housing and slaughterhouses.“[Smith] had no law on his side to begin with and he made his fight by publicity. He traced twenty individual typhus cases to one house in East Twentieth Street, which he found full of immigrant families suffering from typhus. Through the tax records he reached the owner, a wealthy and prominent man who flatly refused to do anything about it. Dr. Smith looked up the law and found that there was no way to proceed against the owner. He then went to William Cullen Bryant, then the editor of The New York Evening Post. ‘At the suggestion of Mr. Bryant,’ said Dr. Smith, ‘I finally succeeded in bringing the owner of the fever nest into court on the change of maintaining a nuisance. Bryant’s reporter, who had been instructed, so frightened the owner that he promised to close and repair the house if only the matter were kept out of the papers. Bryant agreed and the owner kept his promise.’” [3]Smith’s work led to the noted Citizens’ Association 1865 investigation and report on sanitary conditions in the city [4] and the passage of the 1866 Metropolitan Health Law. He was appointed one of New York City’s first health commissioners, serving until 1875.Once the Metropolitan Board of Health had been established, Smith argued for the establishment of a State Board of Health. To bolster his case, he used evidence from the success of other state boards of health and of the city’s board. He made his case in a series of publications, notably The Care of Health and Life in the State of New York and A State Board of Health. A Communication to a Member of the Legislature …, both published in 1880. [5]In the latter work he noted, “Already the agitation necessary and incident to the effort to secure the passage of this Bill has produced the most gratifying results in awakening thoughtful minds all over the State to the value of preventive medicine. Not only medical men, but laymen in every pursuit of business, have expressed their surprise at their previous apathy, and their determination now to press these questions upon the attention of the Legislature until adequate legislation is obtained.” The New York State Legislature created the State Board of Health that same year; in 1901 the board was reorganized as the State Department of Health.In between, Smith’s ambitions reached the national scene. In 1872, he was one of the founders of the country’s premier professional public health organization, the American Public Health Association. He served as its first president up to 1875.In later life, Smith was widely honored for his work in American public health. [7] He took time to reflect on the changes that his efforts achieved. His best-known book, The City That Was (1911), tells the story of the deplorable public health conditions that existed in New York City at the beginning of the 19th century and the measures he recommended to remedy those conditions, including regular sanitary inspections. Smith believed man’s natural lifespan to be one hundred years, based on his contention that most animals live for five times the number of years required for the complete formation of their bones. He died on August 27,1922, some six months short of his 100th birthday.
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