JF Ptak Science Books Post 2326
Most of the time my work in the book world is figuring stuff out, finding out where one paper influences another, what is important, or significant, and why, and where everything fits and makes sense. These works are almost always published–today’s effort was not, and hardly identified, so before any of the research could be started the origin had to be figured out.
First of all the work in question is a medical manuscript–the clues were a former bookseller’s date guesstimate (“1875?”) and a name, “Harold A. Fiske”. Now the name is a big deal, but it is not an uncommon name. Then there was a third clue: after paging through the book’s 221 pages I found the only date (“4/29/95”) and a name, “Prof Hammond”. Those were major clues, because now the book was definitely dated (1895) and that it was a medical notebook, and that there was a section on nervous diseases for a lecture given by a Prof Hammond in April 1895.
The work after this became a little easy–a google search found many “Harold A. Fiskes”, fewer physicians, and then fewer still in the 19th c. Then a hit in the L.A. Herald for a marriage announcement in 1907, and an obituary in the L.A. Times for 1922, for a man by this name, a doctor, dying at age 49 (giving him a birth date for 1873, in line for being in school in 1895), and a note that he was born in Vermont. Next to the University of Vermont, where a very helpful librarian suggested their Medical School catalog for 1895, and then, boom–finds for Hammond and for Fiske.
There was a Dr. Hammond teaching there in 1895, and that Dr. Hammond was Greame Hammond, M.D., of New York City, and who was at one time president of the Neurological Section of the New York Academy of Medicine (and succeeded by the great Hillary Putnam Jacobi, reference the Chicago Medical Recorder, volume 4, January-June 1893). Dr. Hammond is listed as a “Professor of Special Subjects”, that being “disease and nervous system”.
Harold A. Fiske is listed as in the section on attendees of the school.
[See the University of Vermont Medical School Catalog for 1895 online here:http://scholarworks.uvm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=dmlcatalog [From the UVM Medical School catalog]
And also lastly, in the text of the catalog occcurs a notice for Dr. Hammond, “A Clinic for Diseases of the Nervous System will be held during the course of lectures by Prof. Hammond, between April 29th and May 3d” (page 14) and on page 182 of Fiske’s notebook is the entry for the notes “Prof Hammond, 4-29-95, Diseases of the Nervous System”. So there really is no doubt about where the notes were made and by whom and when.
There are many times when I research things like this and come up with nothing about who the author was, or when (positively) it was written, or where. So it is a fine feeling when the little clues liek the ones above fall so nicely into place.
So: the medical notebook was written by Harold A. Fiske (1873-19221), the middle section of the work dated April 1895. It is a concise and extensive work containing about 25,000 words, running 223pp, generally about 22 lines per page and eight words per line (conservatively). The entries are generally made with the following guidelines: description, cause, symptoms, inspection, prognosis, treatment.
The work contains notes and observations with the following headings: jaundice, coma, cetalepsy/hysteria, apoplexy, croup, stomatitis, chancrum oris, ptyalism, quinsy, diphtheria, goiter, capilary bronchitis (pp 40-43), asthma (44-46), pneumonia (the disease which would kill Dr. Fiske in 1922, pp 46-51, emphysema (52-3), whooping cough (54-5), tuberculosis (60-3), empyema (64), pneumo-hydro-thorax (65), acute gastritis (66-7), dyspepsia (68-9), cancer of stomach (70-72), inflammation of instestine (74-5), acute anticular rheumatism (78-9), gout (80), arthritis (81), muscular rheumatism (83), typhilitis (86), perityphlitis (88-9), dysentary/blood flux (90-2), cholera morbus (93-95), Cholera (96-9), Perionitis (103), intestinal worms (104-107), trichinae spiralis (108-9), lead poisoning (110-111), Cirrhosis of the liver (112-115), jaundice and hepatic colic (116-117), diabetes (118-121), eczema (122-4), fever (122-7), grip (128-131), typhoid fever (134-139), Bright’s disease (140-5), [various/sundry, 146-9], variola/small pox (150-3), epilepsy (154-5), [156-161 blank], diphtheria (162-5), diarrhoae (166-176), chronic constipation (176-7), adenoids (178), acute shingles (179-180), diseases of the nervous system (181-186), locomotor ataxy (187-191), polio (192-195), sciatica 196-7), athetosis (198), traumatic epilepsy (199), hysteria, neurasthemia (203-205), sexual neurasthemic (205), epilepsy (206-209), coebral Haemorrage (210-212), St. Vitus Dance (216-216), facial paralysis (215-216), neuralgia (217-218), paralysis (219), hypnosis (221).