Garnett, Alexander Y.P.

Water; Its Sources, Varieties, Constitution and Therapeutical Uses [manuscript caption title]

"Naval Asylum" January, 1848. [3]pp., on a single folded folio sheet of lined paper, docketed in pencil on verso of the second leaf, "Dr. Garnett's Essay." Old folds, light toning, minor darkening along folds. Very good. Item #2927

A manuscript essay authored by Dr. Alexander Yelverton Peyton Garnett (1820-1888), a Navy surgeon recently returned from overseas service. Dr. Garnett was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's medical program and served as an assistant surgeon in the United States Navy until his retirement in the year the present work was created. He thereafter practiced medicine in Washington, D.C. until the outbreak of the Civil War. Ever a Virginian, Dr. Garnett served prominently as a surgeon for the Confederate Army, and as the personal physician to both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. After the war, he continued in private practice in Richmond, then Washington, D.C. and in 1886 served as the president of the American Medical Association.

The present short essay by Dr. Garnett focuses on the importance and utility of water. Garnett opens by writing that "There is no one of the four elements entering into the great division recognized by the Ancients of fire, air, earth, & water, more universally diffused throughout nature than" water. As promised in his manuscript title, Garnett then proceeds to expound upon water's "sources, varieties, constitution and therapeutical uses." The precise use or final published source of the present essay is unknown, but Dr. Garnett published a number of articles in contemporary medical journals, and the present work on water may have been one of them. He is described in the DAMB as "a classic writer on medical subjects."

Price: $750.00