WARREN, JOHN COLLINS. 1778-1856.


Cases of organic diseases of the heart. Boston: Thomas B. Wait, 1809. 8vo (242 x 154 mm). 2 engraved plates. Publisher's printed wrappers, worn to edges, lacking upper portion of rear cover, and 22 mm at each spine end.Provenance: Dr. Amos Holbrook (1754-1842, ink signature)."THE FIRST MONOGRAPH ON HEART DISEASE WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES" (Garrison-Morton 10602). John Collins Warren was a graduate of Harvard College who served as an apprentice to his father, Revolutionary War surgeon John Warren, before spending two years abroad studying in London, Edinburgh, Leiden, and Paris (where he attended Jean Nicolas Corvisart's clinic). Three years after his monograph on heart disease appeared, Warren founded the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery with James Jackson. "Dr Warren early distinguished himself by the publication of a small but excellent Memoir of Organic Diseases of the Heart, illustrated by cases and dissections, which evince great acuteness of observation, and originality of thought. The justly celebrated work of Corvisart had appeared in Paris in 1806, but was still little known in other European countries, from the restraints in communication with the continent; and in the brief essay of Dr. Warren, which appeared in Boston in 1809, were given in the English language the first sound and rational notions on the nature, diagnostic symptoms, and characteristic effects of diseases of the heart, the confirmation and diffusion of which has formed the honour and value of modern pathology" (Anon. Edinburgh Med. Surg. J. 48, (1837), pp 482). Warren's book, which is very rare, includes eleven detailed case reports, one of which details Massachusetts governor James Sullivan's illness. In this report, Warren clearly describes a breathing pattern known as Cheyne-Stokes respiration a decade before those Irish physicians published their description of the phenomenon (W. Bruce Fye, "John Collins Warren," (Clin. Cardiol. 24: pp 93-94, 2001). Sold with a signed copy of Fye's offprint, as well as an 1860 engraved portrait of Warren, after a painting by Gilbert Stuart.