OSLER, WILLIAM. 1849-1919.


Typed Manuscript Signed in type ("William Osler, MD"), carbon copies with extensive autograph additions and emendations, being two drafts of his 1897 article "Internal secretions considered in their physiological, pathological, and clinical aspects: Sporadic cretinism in America," 10 pp, folio, [c.1897,] some soiling, with small tears to the edges of the horizontal fold;WITH: "Internal Secretions; considered in their Physiological, Pathological and Clinical Aspects: On Sporadic Cretinism in America," offprint from Transactions of the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, Vol IV, 1897, Provenance: Rupert Norton (1867-1914, inscription, with manuscript note to endpaper, From the Author"); Library of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland (withdrawal stamp). PRESENTATION COPY; and his earlier article, "On Sporadic Cretinism in America," offprint from The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, November, 1893, both in original publisher's wrappers. RARE OSLER MANUSCRIPT, EXTENSIVELY REWORKED, including cancelled information not included in the published article. The 1897 article as published included 60 cases: this manuscript includes the first 14, with a final leaf of statistics that includes data on 56 cases. According to biographer Michael Bliss, "The greatest purely medical success story of the 1890s was the introduction of thyroid extract to treat the disease known as cretinism or myxedema. In 1893 Osler was among the first American physicians to use the treatment. He made a special study of the disease, corresponding with physicians across the continent to try to determine its prevalence. In the 1895 revision of his text he hailed the results of thyroid feeding as 'unparalleled by anything in the whole range of curative measures. Within six weeks a poor, feeble-minded, toad-like caricature of humanity may be restored to mental and bodily health.' In 1897 he delivered a major paper, 'Sporadic Cretinism in America,' to a Washington Congress of Physicians and Surgeons in which he used stunning before-and-after lantern slides to show marvelous transformations and 'undreamt-of transfigurations,' and in addition to citing all the medical literature on the subject also referred to descriptions by Milton, Shakespeare, and an instance of 'the brave kiss of the daughter of Hippocrates'" (Bliss, William Osler: A Life in Medicine, pp 243-244). Osler medical manuscripts in the marketplace are exceedingly rare, with neither ABPC and rarebookhub recording a sale.