1839 MEDICINE FOR ANTEBELLUM AMERICA. The French Practice of Medicine: being a translation of L. J. Begin's Treatise on Therapeutics: with occasional notes and observations illustrative of the treatment of diseases in the climate of North America

New York: E. Bliss, 1829. First American edition.

SCARCE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF FRENCH EARLY 19TH CENTURY TREATISE ON THERAPEUTICS ADAPTED FOR NORTH AMERICAN PHYSICIANS.

Two volumes in one, 8 1/2 inches tall hardcover, viii, 243; 236 pages, new black cloth boards with paper spine label, very good. Edges of pages darkened and wrinkled, with scattered marginal pencil notations. Signature of Joseph A. Eve, Dec 19th, 18** top of title page, volume 1; signature of Robert C. Eve, 1880 top of Preface. Begin classifies medications in three types: debilitating medications, direct stimulating medications, and revulsive medications. Tessier has added notes and treatments of North American diseases.

LOUIS JACQUES BEGIN (2 November 1793, Liège - 13 April 1859) was a French military physician. He began his medical studies in the military hospital at Metz, subsequently serving as an assistant surgeon in the Napoleonic Wars (Russian and German campaigns). From 1815 he was associated with the civil hospital in Strasbourg, followed by an appointment at Val de Grace. In 1823 he obtained his doctorate at the University of Strasbourg, where in 1832 he became a lecturer in anatomy, physiology and surgery. In 1832 he was appointed surgeon-major, and in 1842 became a member of the Conseil de santé des armées (Sanitary council of the French armies), of which he served as president from 1850 to 1857. In 1847 he was elected president of the Académie de Médecine. In 1825, he published Traité Thérapeutique Rédigé Suivant les Principes de la Nouvelle Doctrine Médicale.

FRANÇOIS-XAVIER TESSIER (1799-1835) was physician, apothecary, militia officer, publisher, editor, translator, office holder, politician, and teacher. In April 1823 he became apothecary of the Emigrant Hospital at Quebec. In 1827 he moved to New York, where he remained until the spring of 1830. There he published an English translation of Louis-Jacques Bégin's Impressive Thérapeutique, to which he added numerous notes. During the same period he published a prospectus for a forthcoming Journal des sciences naturelles de l'Amérique du Nord, which he described as a continuation of the Quebec Medical Journal. A periodical covering botany, natural history, chemistry, mineralogy, pharmacy, and of course medicine and surgery, it was to be published in New York and to be addressed to "the immense French population scattered all over America." Unlike the Quebec Medical Journal, which was bilingual, it would be entirely in French; "since that language is, among modern languages, the only one that is appropriate to all the sciences," he averred, "it is obvious that none of them, certainly [not] the English language, is suitable to serve as its interpreter." Tessier was quite certain his project would succeed and therefore was not afraid to announce that a 300-page issue would appear quarterly. His success did not, however, match his rashness, for the journal never saw the light of day. But the initiative was proof of his determination, especially after the failure of his earlier venture into medical journalism. Despite his many activities Tessier found time to teach medicine. During the cholera epidemic in 1832 he offered, with the aid of his students, to tend half the patients at the temporary cholera hospital. One of his major concerns was the founding of a society to encourage smallpox vaccination among the poor. He considered the American Benjamin Rush, who greatly influenced contemporary medicine, one of the most knowledgeable doctors of his epoch. He never tired of urging his colleagues to forget "the theoretical approach" and to observe nature. He fought against the prejudices and "the old habits" that were deeply rooted among rural people particularly, constituting obstacles to the advance of medicine and fertile ground for quackery. In the controversy among doctors in Europe and North America over whether cholera was contagious, Tessier sided with those who believed it was not. They held that it appeared suddenly as a result of "a particular condition of the atmosphere," as did measles and the plague. Tessier did admit the contagious nature of smallpox and syphilis. Like most of his colleagues, however, he theorized that fevers came from miasmas. [Dictionary of Canadian Biography].

JOSEPH ADAMS EVE, M.D. (1805-1880), Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Infants, was one of seven founding faculty members of the Medical College of Georgia (opened in 1832) in Augusta.