REID, EDITH GITTINGS. B.1863


The Great Physician. A Life of Sir William Osler. New York: Oxford University Press, 1931. 8vo. 10 photographic illustration plates. Two letters from the author and a clipping tipped in at back. Publisher's brown cloth gilt, pictorial dust jacket. Rubbed, slightly sunned, minor browning to endpapers.Provenance: Harvey Cushing (book label); Yale University Medical Library (bookplate).HARVEY CUSHING'S COPY, with two hand-written letters to Cushing from Edith Reid tipped in at the rear, along with a clipping of Archibald Malloch's published review of the book. Reid's first letter reads, "Of course I know that you & Billy Thayer are the ones who have wished me on the Oxford Press. I have had the courage - or audacity? to say yes to their suggestion for a short life of Sir William to be ready by the 1st of January next. Your own life is so utterly satisfying to the friends of Sir Wm that what I do will be something to catch the eyes of those who did not know him - and if I do my work at all well then they will turn to your real Life and live with him." The second letter refers to Muirhead's memoir of Lady Osler, which Reid had not seen.