Beschreibung:

CADWALADER, Thomas (1708-1779). An essay on the West-India dry-gripes; with the method of preventing and curing that cruel distemper. To which is added, an extraordinary case in physick . Philadelphia: Benjamin Franklin 1745. 4 o (193 x 124 mm). Collation: A 4 (_+A2.3) B-F 4 . 24 leaves. Woodcut tailpiece ornament (Miller no. 19). (Occasional light foxing, small piece torn from upper margin of F4). Contemporary quarter sheep, boards covered in marbled paper, spine gilt panelled with red morocco lettering-piece (extremities worn with some loss to paper especially at fore-corners); modern half morocco folding case. Provenance : childish scribble on title-page (cropped). FIRST EDITION OF ONE OF THE EARLIEST MEDICAL BOOKS CONTAINING SIGNIFICANT ORIGINAL RESEARCH TO BE PUBLISHED BY AN AMERICAN PHYSICIAN IN AMERICA. Cadwalader, a Philadelphia physician, was associated with Benjamin Franklin in founding the Philadelphia Library in 1731. His only printed work, the Essay on the dry-gripes is a classic account of the effects of lead poisoning. The various ailments known as the 'dry-gripes' were later identified as lead colic and lead palsy, "both very common ailments in eighteenth-century America due to the custom of drinking punch made with Jamaican rum, which was distilled in lead pipes. Cadwalader's treatise gives an excellent account of these ailments, for which he recommended mild cathartics and opium" (Norman). The "extraordinary case in physick" was one of a woman afflicted with osteomalacia (softening of the bones), upon whom Cadwalader performed an autopsy in 1742, one of the earliest recorded autopsies in America. This copy is from the second issue, with a revised preface printed on the conjugate cancel leaves A2.3. "When in late March, 1745, Cadwalader completed the preface to his little essay and had it set in type, some third party, possibly even Ben Franklin saw that the largely defensive and rambling introduction would not do and helped the doctor write a new one" (Miller). VERY RARE. Evans 5553; Garrison-Morton 2094; Guerra a-213; Miller 369; Norman 385. [ Bound after :] [TRONCHIN, Thodore (1709-1781)]. A treatise on the colica pictonum; or the dry belly-ach . Edited and translated from Latin into English by Ralph Schomberg (1714-1792). London: W. Johnston, 1764. 8 o . Collation: A 4 B-K 8 L 4 . 80 leaves, A 1 blank. (Slight discoloration.) First edition in English, a translation of Tronchin's De colica pictonum (1757; see lot 709). Norman 2096. An interesting association of two rare early works on lead poisoning