Search Results: Medicine from Downtown Brown Books, ABAA

New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Near fine. The autobiography of the Australian scientist who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for work with Rolf Zinkernagel on T-cells and the nature of immune defense. 294 pages. First edition (first printing, with a numberline ending in 1). A fine copy in a near fine dust jacket. This copy is inscribed to fellow Nobel Prize winner Edmond Fischer. Fischer, a biochemist at the University of Washington, won the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work, with Edwin G. Krebs, on reversible protein phosphorylation, an enzyme that helps cells communicate. Fischer made a few brief penciled notes at the back of the book. It seems obvious to state that books inscribed by one Nobel Prize winner to another are not common.

Boston: David Clapp & Son, Printers, 1866. First Edition. Very good. The great 19th century German ophthalmologist's first book in America. This short volume collects two papers, first published in the Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde in 1865 and 1863, then translated for the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and soon after reissued in this pamphlet. Graefe is especially remembered for his work on cataracts. Translated from the German by Hasket Derby. 86 pages plus errata; issued without illustrations. Uncommon. An attractive copy bound in the 20th century in speckled calf with gilt decoration. Text pages tanned, bound without the presumed original wrappers.

Cambridge, England: At the University Press, published for the British Journal of Ophthalmology, 1937. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. An important early work on birth defects affecting the eye, based on Dr. Mann's extensive research on embryology. Ida Mann (1893-1983) was a leading expert on the eye in Great Britain. In the 1920s, she was one of a handful of women who were fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons. She was made a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 1950 and then a Dame Commander (DBE) in 1980. xi, 444 pages. With 284 illustrations, including a few color plates. Garrison-Morton 5987, the second of two books by Mann including in the medical reference. First edition (first printing). A very good copy in a very good, price-clipped dust jacket. The jacket is missing a chip at the top of the spine, affecting the author's name. Uncommon in a jacket.

New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1966. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. An English translation of an 18th-century work that "hypothesize much of what has become the basis of modern genetics." Sources of Science, no. 29. 86 pages. First edition (of this edition). A near fine copy in a very good dust jacket with surface scuffing.

Seattle and Portland: Lindsay Publishing Company, 1910. First Edition. Trade paperback. Very good. This is a romance set in Seattle and on Puget Sound, with some scenes in San Francisco. The plot follows two friends, both doctors, whose families intermarry in 1909. The author seems to be the wife of Dr. A. A. Lindsay, a physician operating out the the Savoy Hotel in Seattle who published many tracts on health. 150 pages; frontispiece portrait of the author, and one page of ads for other Lindsay Publishing books. First edition (first printing). Very good in wrappers; many pages roughly opened with tears along the bottom edge.

London: The Bodley Head, 1983. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. A memoir of Alfred Nobel by the executor of the industrialist's will, and the person widely credited with organizing the prize foundation. The book was published after Sohlman's death, in 1950, and first translated into English in 1983 to mark the 150th anniversary of Alfred Nobel's birth. 144 pages. First English-language edition. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. This copy belonged to Edmond Fischer, the co-winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Fischer has signed the book at the top of the front free endpaper. On the endpaper and pastedown, five of the six other winners that year have inscribed the book to Fischer: Rudolph Marcus (chemistry); Derek Walcott (literature); George Charpak (physics); Edwin Krebs (co-winner in medicine); and Gary Becker (economics). Only the Peace Prize winner, Rigoberto Menchu, did not sign. Fischer was a biochemist at the University of Washington, and he had this book signed… Read More

Madras: Printed by the Superintendent, Government Press, 1891. First Edition. xi, 161 pages, including indexes in English, French, German, Hindustani, and several other Indian languages. "Printed and published by order of the Madras government, at the recommendation of the Madras working committee, Calcutta International Exhibition, 1883-1884. A listing of plants, with descriptions of their medical use, often citing earlier publications, including a long entry on opium. Sherif was a retired physician and a graduate of the Madras Medical College; this work was published posthumously, which may explain why no volume II ever appeared. Modern cloth and marbled paper binding; leather spine label. Covers faded. Text block a bit tanned but very good.

Washington, DC: V. H. Winston & Sons, 1978. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. With an introductory commentary and editorial contributions by Harry J. Jerison. Translated by Harry J. Jerison and Irene Jerison. vii, 340 pages. First edition (first printing). A very good copy in a very good dust jacket. This copy with Stephen Jay Gould's ownership signature. This copy came from Gould's Harvard office library, with a posthumous bookplate denoting the provenance. Gould seldom signed his name in books, except in examples like this one, where someone else's name was in the book already.

New York: M. L. Holbrook, 1881. Hardcover. Near fine. Fourteenth edition "enlarged." A guide to painless childbirth, which seems to rely mostly on baths, a fruit diet, and a good attitude. The book was very popular, being reprinted every year for more than a decade. 159, [9] pages. A near-fine copy in terra cotta cloth. While this is not a particularly scarce book, this copy belonged to Elmira Y. Howard, one of the first women physicians in Ohio, with her dated ownership signature on the title page.

Calcutta: Government of India Press, 1952. First Edition. Information on "a number of useful drugs of the indigenous materia medica" derived from leaves, with reports and plates documenting microscopic analysis. Includes entries on tea, tobacco, coca, cannabis sativa, digitalis, etc. Government of India, Ministry of Health, Pharmacognosy Laboratory Bulletin No. 2. vi, 124 pages. 7 by 10 inches. 51 half-tone plates, most reproducing four photographs of plant specimens, plus a folding map, "Distribution of Leaf Drug-Yielding Plants in India." First edition (first printing). Very good in the publisher's half-leather binding stamped in gilt on the spine. Several small wormholes penetrate the entire book.

London and Bombay: Richardson & Co. and Education Society's Press, Byculla, 1881. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Descriptions of plants in the Southern province of Pakistan, with information on their use, organized by class and family. The author was curator of the Kurrachee Municipal Museum. Among the plants given full treatment are cannabis sativa ("The general effects of the resin are alleviation of pain, remarkable increase of appetite, unequivocal aphrodisia, and great mental cheerfulness") and garden poppy ("Indian opium is decidedly superior to any other; much care being bestowed on its cultivation and preparation"). xxxv, 219 pages, including indexes by scientific name and common names in English and various Indian languages. Printed and bound in Bombay. First edition (first printing). Ink stain on front cover, else very good in the publisher's pebbled cloth. Old paper shelf label on spine; government office library bookplate on front pastedown.

[London]: Harrison and Sons, 1876. First Edition. Pamphlet. Very good. The first separate printing of an important paper in the history of the treatment of glaucoma. In this paper, Argyll Robertson was "the first to recommend trephining the sclera in those cases of glaucoma where extensive degenerative changes in the iris made an iridectomy impracticable"-Andrzej Grzybowski, "A Tribute to Douglas Argyll Robertson in the Centenary of his Death" in Neuro-Ophthalmology, vol. 33, no. 6, 2009. "This principle still forms the basis for modern filtering surgical procedures for glaucoma"-wikipedia. Robertson was the leading eye surgeon in Scotland at the time, the Argyll Robertson pupil is named for him. While not identified as such, this is likely an off-print from Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital Reports, Volume 8, 1876, where it first appeared. 19 pages. First edition. A very good copy in self-wrappers. With a pencilled note at the top, "From the Author", perhaps in Robertson's hand.

Philadelphia: A. Waldie, 1842. First US edition. Hardcover. Very good. An uncommon mid-19th century American edition of work on ophthalmology. The first edition was London, 1840. Series: Dunglison's American Medical Library. pp. iv, [5]-201, [v]-vi. Half leather binding over marbled paper-covered boards, recently rebacked. Generally very good, with wear to the edges. Stamp of a defunct library on the title page and the following page.

San Francisco: Abell & Priest, 1892. Two fine images of pioneering physician Pauline Root dressed in a sari, presumably one she wore in Madurai, India, while working as a doctor for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Root (1859-1944) graduated from the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia and was the first female doctor to hold many posts throughout her working life. She spent seven or eight years in India establishing a Woman's Hospital in Madurai. She left India in 1891 and visited China and Japan before returning to the West Coast of the United States, giving talks on her work to Christian groups along the way. She gave a lecture to the Occidental Board of Foreign Missions in San Francisco on February 3, 1892, and these photographs are likely to have been taken at that time. After returning to the East Coast, Root studied surgery at Cornell, obtained licenses to practice in Massachusetts and New York, and took a position as the resident physician at Smith… Read More

London: Methuen & Co, 1957. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. A collection of popular science essays, including the title piece on grafts and transplants, the field for which Medawar won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1960. Medawar (1915-1987) was a distinguished scientist whose research contributed significantly toward transplants as a medical therapy. He was also an innovative thinker on evolution and includes in this volume his essay "An Unsolved Problem in Biology", which tackles the question of senescence, or why organisms deteriorate with age. According to Google Scholar, this essay has been cited nearly 2400 times and its title has become synonymous with the question, with many papers on the subject claiming to have solved the riddle and just as many announcing that the problem remains a puzzle. First edition (first printing). Near fine in a spine-tanned dust jacket, that is otherwise very good. This copy is inscribed by Medawar to the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley… Read More

Luzern (Lucerne): Verlag Hans Erni-Stiftung, 1983. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. The text of a lecture issued as Vortragsreihe "Panta rhei" der Hans Erni-Stiftung, 3. Arber won a Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of restriction endonucleases. 52 pages. First edition. A fine copy in silver boards (hardcover). This copy is inscribed to the future Nobel Prize winner, Edmund Fischer, "To Eddy Fischer with best wishes, Werner Arber. Dec 1983. With thanks for the nice pictures." Fischer won the Nobel Prize in 1992 for work on the regulation of cellular processes. Vom Fluss der Gene does not cite any sources, however, the inscription suggests that Fischer may have prepared one or more of the illustrations for the book. This book came from Fischer's home library following his death in Seattle at 101 years of age.