Milestones of Science Books

RUMSEY, Henry Wyldbore.

Essays on State Medicine.

London: John Churchill, 1856.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002438

8vo (222 x 140 mm). xix [1], 424, 32 pp., including half-title, printer's device on title and publisher's catalogue bound at end. Bound in original blindstamped publisher's cloth, gilt lettered spine, all pages uncut and mostly unopened (light rubbing to extremities). Text crisp and clean throughout. Provenance: presentation copy to unknown recipient, inscribed on half-title page "with the author's best compliment". ----

EXCEPTIONALLY RARE FIRST EDITION of Rumsey's essays on public health and sanitation in Great Britain during the mid 19th century. Henry Rumsey (1809-1876), physician and surgeon, was one of the leading sanitarians of his generation. "In 1835, after having devoted much attention to the establishment of provident societies among the working classes, he commenced his labours as Hon Secretary of the Sick Poor Committee of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association - labours which were continued for ten years. He furnished materials for a series of Reports, on which was founded a Bill, introduced into the House of Commons in 1840 [...], for the better regulation of Medical Relief under the Poor Law. This led to his being examined, first in 1838 by the Poor Law Committee of the House of Commons, and again in 1844 by Lord Ashley's Select Committee on Medical Poor Relief, when he submitted a mass of evidence, collected with much labour, relating to the sickness prevalent among the poor in towns, and forcibly showing the need of preventive measures, under the superintendence and control of a General Department of Public Health. [...] Rumsey's best-known book, which for many years was the only work on the subject, was his Essays on State Medicine" (Plarr's Lives of the Fellows, The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2008, online resource E000465).
Literature: R.M. Acheson, Henry Wyldbore Rumsey and the Case for State Medicine. In: Public Health, vol. 102, 1988, pp. 217-225.

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