An Essay, Medical, Philosophical, and Chemical, on Drunkenness, and its Effects on the Human Body

Thomas Trotter

Boston, Philadelphia : Bradford et Read, A. Finley, 1813

[First American edition of the First Medical Treatise on Alcoholism and its treatment] First published in 1804 in London, the work is rare in all early editions.  Bound in contemporary full calf. Rebacked. New spine leather over original boards. Gilt ruled. Burgandy morocco spine label.  203 p.  Early inscription from Robert Troup Paine, a Harvard student who died in 1851.  His father was a doctor and Harvard graduate who donated his estate to perpetuate the name of his son who died while in his senior year at Harvard. Paine has signed the title and inscribed it to Harvard.  

Trotter placed drunkenness within the realm of psychological medicine by identifying the mind as the cause of the affliction, rather than the consequence of lax morality. He noted the clinical effects of alcohol and its abuse, and recommended that physicians first gain the confidence of their alcoholic patients, then deprive them "at once" of all alcoholic beverages. "Trotter wrote his dissertation on inebriety and he comments in the Preface that the present work 'may be considered as a comment on the thesis, De ebrietate, eiusque effectibus in corpus humanum. Edin. 1788' (p. vi-vii). One of the earliest works on alcoholism, Trotter defines drunkenness, describes its symptoms, discusses the effects alcohol has on the body, lists diseases resulting from alcoholism, and considers methods of treatment" (Heirs of Hippocrates)  NLM; BM 25: 500 (732);  Heirs of Hippocrates 1172; Garrison-Morton 2159; Shaw et Shoemaker, 29975.