University Libraries

ROBERT JAMES (1705-1776). A medicinal dictionary. 3 vols. London: T. Osborne, 1743-1745.

James studied at Oxford and was granted his M.D. from Cambridge by royal mandate in 1728. He settled in London after practicing at Sheffield, Lichfield, and Birmingham. A successful physician, he became quite wealthy and famous when his “fever powder” became the most popular nostrum of the day. The chief ingredients were lime phosphate and antimony oxide and the medicine was used as an emetic, purgative, diaphoretic, or alterative depending on the dose and condition of the patient. James authored a number of books but the present work is the one for which he is best remembered. 

 It remains the largest, most exhaustive, and most erudite English language medical dictionary written before the nineteenth century. It was published in weekly installments beginning in 1742 and ending in August of 1745. Although never identified or acknowledged by name, there is ample evidence that Samuel Johnson, a close friend and student of James, contributed to the dictionary.

 It is interesting that James includes a detailed  entry on the unicorn horn (shown here) at a time when most scientists had begun to doubt its existence.

Puerperal fever, often called childbed fever, ravaged obstetrics patients in the U.S., Britain, and Europe throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries.  Its symptoms included severe abdominal pain, fever, and debility and carried a mortality rate as high as seventy percent during some epidemics.  Even though the greatest incidences occurred in close-quartered  “lying-in hospitals,” (state-supported maternity hospitals) only rarely did the notion of contagion figure into the arguments and these were largely ignored. 

 In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) published, The contagiousness of puerperal fever,in The New England quarterly journal of medicine and surgery.  In this moving, lucid, and somewhat acerbic paper, Holmes, then a prominent Boston physician and lecturer, demonstrated conclusively the contagious nature of childbed fever and, based on his and his colleagues experiences, showed that the dreaded disease was carried on the unwashed hands of the physician from patient to patient.  Holmes also set forth strict guidelines with regard to hand-washing, cleanliness, and physician isolation to avoid and cut short epidemics.  Sadly, Holmes’ warnings went largely unheeded partly due to the fact that his paper was published in a little-known journal but mostly because the medical establishment was unwilling to entertain the notion that “gentlemen physicians” could harbor disease.  Several years later, Vienna physician, Ignac Semmelweis (1818-1865), independently, verified Holmes’ conclusions by means of a controlled study based on hand-washing.  Even so, the contagiousness of puerperal fever was denied by many prominent physicians until the acceptance of the germ theory of disease in the late 1800’s at which time Holmes’ words from 1843 finally rang true:

Whatever indulgence may be granted to those who have heretofore been the ignorant cause of so much misery, the time has come when the existence of a private pestilence in the sphere of a single physician should be looked upon not as a misfortune but a crime.

 Gerardus Blasius (1626?-1692?).  Anatome animalium.  Amsterdam, 1681.

 Although Blasius was a practicing physician in Amsterdam, his real interest lay in anatomy and, in particular, comparative anatomy.  He worked closely with philosophers and scientists such as John Locke, Jan Swammerdam, and Niels Stensen to promote the study of anatomy and to widen the availability of both animal and human remains for closer study.  Balsius’ 1681 work  is his most ambitious project and, according to historian Francis J. Cole, is the “first comprehensive manual of comparative anatomy based on the original researches of a working anatomist…”  While the author provides meticulously detailed descriptions of 119 species, it is the eye-catching images that capture the reader’s attention.