OSLER, WILLIAM. 1849-1919.


Autograph Manuscript Signed ("W.O."), with numerous deletions and emendations, being the submitted manuscript for his "Fracastorius on contagion in phthisis," (published in The Outdoor Life, 1904), 6 pp, 8vo, Pointe-à-Pic?, 1904, some toning, minor wear to edges.Provenance: William Osler; sent to Lawrason Brown at the Journal of the Outdoor Life (letter dated July 11, 1904); the Library of the Trudeau Sanitorium; the Rittenhouse Book Store in Philadelphia, 1987; purchased by the present owner. VERY RARE AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF WILLIAM OSLER. Originally published in Lawrason Brown's Journal of the Outdoor Life at the Trudeau Sanitorium in Saranac Lake, NY, the article is "a commentary on the remarkable knowledge of tuberculosis and its contagiousness that Fracastorius shows in his De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione, 1546" (Golden & Roland 963). Cushing published Osler's letter which accompanied this manuscript when Osler submitted it to Brown: "I enclose you a little memo of Fracastorius on the contagiousness of Phthisis which may be of interest enough to put in your useful paper. It was nice to see Trudeau looking so well..." (Cushing 1, p 646). Of Fracastorius, Osler begins the manuscript (which was published verbatim): "At one of the meetings of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Historical Club this year Dr. Welch gave us a most interesting account of Jerome Fracastor, the founder of the germ theory of disease, and the author of the most celebrated medical poem in literature. I was fortunate enough to secure the original editions of these works, and glancing through the little book on contagion (De Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis et Curatione, 1546) I was astonished to find an extraordinarily modern statement on the subject of tuberculosis. The contagiousness of the disease was not unknown to the ancients, but I know of no such strong expression of this as in this Chapter IX, headed De Phthisi Contagiosa." In December of 1904, Osler would read for the first time his address on Fracastoro to the Charaka Club (an offprint of this address is included here, the copy of his godson and protegee Campbell Howard). "Fracastoro was the first to state the germ theory of infection. He suggested the contagiousness of tuberculosis. Haeser even describes him as the 'founder of scientific epidemiology.' This book [De contagione et contagiosis morbis et curatione, 1546, the work referenced by Osler] which contains one of the first accounts of typhus (pp. 43-44), marks an epoch in the history of medicine, since Fracastorius enunciated in it, perhaps for the first time, the modern doctrine of the specific characters and infectious nature of fevers" (Garrison-Morton 2528 and 5371). Osler manuscripts are very rare in the marketplace. Also included is an offprint of Lyman's biography of Lawrason Brown.