Dalton, Physiologie et Hygiene, 1870 (inscribed by author to Austin Flint)
Physiologie et Hygiene des Ecoles, des Colleges et des Familles par J. C. Dalton, M. D. Professeur de Physiologie au College des Medecine et des Chirurgiens de New-York. Traduit de L’Anglais avec le Concours de L’Auteur par E. Acosta, M. D. Avec 68 Figures. Paris. J. B. Bailliere et Fils Libraires de L’Academie Imperiale de Medecine 19, rue Hautefeuille, pres du boulevard St-Germain. 1870.
Green pebbled cloth over boards, rebacked, with gold text on spine. Mild wear to boards. Marbled end papers. Inscribed on first fly leaf, “Prof Austin Flint with compliments of J. C. D.” Library book plate (1909) and withdrawal stamp (1969/71) on front pastedown. Library stamps on title page and elsewhere. Green ribbon marker. Front hinge cracked. Binding tight. Ffep, blank, ad leaf, half title (frontis on verso), title - xiv, 535, errata leaf, 36 of ads, blank, rfep.
See Heirs 1917 for the 1877 American edition: “The popularity of his text for students prompted Dalton to write the present treatise for the lay public. He explained that the book was intended chiefly for individuals who had no previous knowledge of medical subjects and made every attempt to explain all anatomical and physiological terms, even providing a glossary of terms for that purpose. To further increase the usefulness of the book as a text, Dalton provided a series of from twenty to sixty questions at the end of each chapter.”
First American edition appears to have been 1869. Curious that the author (American) inscribed this 1870 French copy to Flint (also an American).
John Call Dalton (1825 – 1889). See G-M 1571 “Dalton, Professor of Physiology at the universities of Buffalo and Vermont, and the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, was the first American to devote his time exclusively to [experimental method in medical science]. He was present at the first demonstration of ether as an anaesthetic, Oct 16,1846, and was quick to see its possibilities as a means of illustrating his lectures with experiments on living animals.” He also published “The most outstanding American neurological atlas of the nineteenth century and one of the best American photographically illustrated medical books of the period.” (G-M 7332).
Austin Flint (1812-1886) held positions in six medical schools. He was a friend of W. H. Welch, and was “one of the outstanding professors of medicine” in the mid 19th century. He graduated from Harvard Medical School when he was 21, then practiced and taught in Boston, Buffalo, Chicago (Rush Medical College), and Louisville (for one year), New Orleans, and New York (Bellevue, etc). He established and edited the Buffalo Medical Journal for 10 years. He held professorships in Theory and Practice of Medicine, Pathology and Clinical Medicine, Clinical Medicine, Principles and Practice of Medicine, and in Pathology and Practical Medicine. He published a textbook on medicine 25 years before Osler. Flint’s Law states “an elevation of pitch always accompanies diminution of resonance in consequence of pulmonary consolidation. In other words, dullness of resonance is never present without the pitch being raised.” The Austin Flint murmur is “a loud presystolic murmur at the apex in aortic regurgitation.” He was involved in public health and ascertained the source of Typhoid fever (a well contaminated by seepage from a privy), in the 1843 outbreak in New Boston (a few miles south of Buffalo). He was part of a six-physician dynasty whose practice of medicine in America lasted over two centuries. (Talbott, Biographical History of Medicine).
A former president of the American Medical Association (1884), he died of a stroke at the age of 74. He was greatly influenced by James Jackson, his teacher at Harvard, who was an advocate for the stethoscope. Flint left almost 17,000 hand-written pages of observations about his patients. He is further described as “a tall hansom man with an excellent voice.” (Dictionary of Medical Biography)
