Beschreibung
Original wrappers. Small piece missing from blank upper corner of front wrapper (see photo). Piece missing from top of spine (see photo). Ink stamp of Geer & Pond Booksellers and Stationers, Hartford CT, on front wrapper (see photo). Foxed and browned. Untrimmed. Very Good. Entire Issue Offered in its original state of printed wrappers. First Edition. The original (anonymous) appearance of Weir Mitchell's first work of fiction, a short story. Scarce in the original wrappers. Mitchell wrote of the origin and publication of this story: "One night soon after the war I was conversing with my friend, Henry Wharton, on the subject of the loss of limbs. I mentioned the singular phenomena connected with this injury and spoke of a man who had lost both legs and both arms in the fight at Mobile Bay. Wharton, who was fond of such talk, laughingly suggested that possibly a man might thus lose a certain part of his consciousness of his own individuality. After he left, I began to amuse myself by writing the history of such a person. I was at a loss for a name until one day, standing on a step in Price Street, I saw on a jeweler's sign, 'Dedlow.' I thought this a good name for a man who had lost his legs, and so I called the tale 'The Case of George Dedlow.' I lent the manuscript to my friend, Mrs. Caspar Wister, who gave it to her father, the Rev. Dr. William Henry Furness. Then I forgot all about it. I was a busy practicing doctor, and it had been but the amusement of one or two evenings. Dr. Furness sent it to the Rev. Edward Everett Hale, then editor of the Atlantic, and to my surprise and amusement I received a check, I think about eighty dollars, and the proof of my story. . . . It attracted immense attention. So real did it appear that subscriptions were made for the unfortunate man, directed to what was known as the Stump Hospital in Philadelphia. For a long while no one knew who had written this marvelous history!" (Burr, Weir Mitchell, His Life and Letters, pp. 125-26). "Although this story is fictional, many elements are taken from Mitchell's interviews with wounded Union soldiers. . . . In the story, a Union army physician suffers a series of misfortunes, each resulting in the amputation of a limb, until he becomes a torso without arms or legs. The story was so realistic that officials of the Army Medical Museum checked the name Dedlow in their files; not only was the name false, but careful review revealed that no soldier during the Civil War had suffered four amputations" (Freemon, Microbes and Minie Balls, pp. 94-95). Dr. William W. Keen, Mitchell's close friend, appears in the story as Dr. Neek. NOTE: This is the original issue (no. 105 for July 1866) in its original state of printed wrappers. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 8897
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