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1 leaf [title page]; 76 pp; 8 tables. "With the Compliments of the Author" slip tipped-in (see photo). Original cloth. Mottling of front and rear covers (see photos). Ink name stamp of former owner (George R. Brush, M.D., U.S. Navy), on the title page (see photo). Very Good. First Edition in book-form. Jacobi and White's paper also appeared in 3 parts in Seguin's Archives of Medicine: vol. 3, no. 3 (June 1880), pp. 296-323, vol. 4, no. 1 (August 1880), 51-72, and vol. 4, no. 2 (October 1880), 163-190. Seguin's Archives of Medicine was published by G. P. Putnam's Sons. The setting of type is identical in the journal and book-form versions. In her biography of Mary Putnam Jacobi, Carla Bittel writes about the book offered here: "Treating anemia, a condition often closely to related to hysteria, was another source of friction between Jacobi and [Weir] Mitchell. Physicians believed that anemia . . . resulted from the stress of female adolescence. Jacobi and Mitchell agreed that massage therapy could help anemics by facilitating nutrition. But while Mitchell insisted on rest for anemia, Jacobi found that 'rest was of the least consequence' in her cases. She preferred to use cold packs, enveloping patients in wet sheets and then covering them with blankets; muscular massage therapy followed. She then took urine and blood samples, and measured urea and hemoglobin levels [Cold Pack, pp. 3-4]. Her laboratory analyses showed that this therapy produced higher levels of urea and rising levels of hemoglobin, both demonstrating that increased stimulation of body tissues resulted in increased nutrition. She concluded sharply, 'These considerations have been entirely overlooked by Mitchell, in the popular essay [Fat and Blood] already referred to, perhaps because in that essay no scientific accuracy was aimed at, but only certain rough, practical results. In this particular case, however, the theoretical inaccuracy constantly tends to defeat the practical benefit' [Cold Pack, pp. 48-49]. . . . Mitchell had achieved wide public recognition for work Jacobi considered to be inadequate. She resented his fame and believed prejudices against women doctors limited her own recognition. She insisted that her research predated his and that her research methodology was superior. In a bold letter to Mitchell [the entire letter can be read online], she argued that her work was more sophisticated than his: 'A year before the appearance of your little book on Fat and Blood, I published in Seguin's Archives an essay on the cold pack and massage in anemia, embodying a good many precise researches, and containing many suggestions, which proved to be quite identical with many of yours. . . . My essay appeared in book form about a year later [the book offered here], and a little after the publication of "Fat and Blood". It is not necessary to comment upon the extraordinary success of your little book, while mine, which was experimental as well as theoretical, has scarcely ever been heard of.' Unlike his 'little book', Jacobi claimed her work was scientific and 'experimental'. Calling his science inferior, she tried not only to earn credit for her work but also to lend credence to her ideas, particularly those that favored active womanhood. Jacobi tried to out-science Mitchell, accusing him of being inaccurate and antiquated" (Carla Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 142-143). A transcription of the indignant letter Mary Putnam Jacobi wrote to Weir Mitchell, ca. 1891, is printed in full in "Mary Putnam Jacobi's Letter of Protest to S. Weir Mitchell (Circa 1891)," introduced and transcribed by Nancy Cervetti, Transactions & Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, series 5, 19 (December 1997): 110-114. Seller Inventory # 16753
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