pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

Garrison–Morton 2715) pasted over Burton inscription (now lifted);
pencil inscription on title ‘Geo[?] Gunnell’.
First edition. Garrison­Morton 989; Horblit, One Hundred Books Famous
in Science 10; Dibner, Heralds of Science 130; Sparrow, Milestones of
Science 19; LeFanu, Notable Medical Books in the Lilly Library, p. 185;
Norman Library 153; Wellcome II, p. 123.
This famous book records Beaumont’s remarkable series of observations on
the chemistry of digestion. These were the Wrst experiments on the stomach
enzymes and the movements of the stomach in a living person. They were
made possible by an accident in which a stomach wound to the French
Canadian fur trapper, Alexis St Martin, healed to form a permanent Wstula.
This allowed Beaumont to take samples of the stomach contents over a
period of time.
‘In the eighteenth­century Réamur and Spallanzani had shown digestion
to be a chemical process. Nevertheless, a good deal of confusion prevailed
concerning various aspects of the digestive process in the stomach; it is to
Beaumont that we owe the clariWcaion of this subject. The results of his
investigations attracted the attention of the scientiWc world, and within a short
time gained admission to the literature dealing with the stomach’. (George
Rosen, DSB 2:543.)
The book is remarkable in other ways too: Beaumont, the son of a
Connecticut farmer, was largely self taught, became an army surgeon, and
Wnally a respected general practitioner. This is one of the earliest important
medical books printed in the united States, and in an unusually large edition
of 3000 copies according to the publisher’s preface to the second edition of
1847 (though Beaumont himself referred to an edition of 1000 copies in a
letter dated 3 December 1833 cited by Norman). Some copies of the Wrst
edition were re­issued in 1834 with a cancel title with the imprint of Lilly,
Wait & Co., Boston, and a German translation was published in the same
year (see next item).
The book was originally issued in plain paper­covered boards backed in
brown muslin with a printed paper label on the spine.
14
BEAuMONT, William (1785–1853)
Neue Versuche und Beobachtungen über den Magensaft und die
Physiologie der Verdauung... Aus dem Englischen.
Leipzig: Bei Christian Ernst Kollmann, 1834.
8vo, pp. vi, 222.
3 lithographed plates with letterpress captions (bound at the end).
205 x 122mm.
Binding: Contemporary pastepaper boards. Worn.
Provenance: Library stamp on title, unidentiWed. With a postcard from
Allen Debus to Walter Pagel dated 13 August 1972 laid in, noting
that ‘Neal Watson should have the Wrst volume of the Festschrift in
London next month’.