Silvester, Henry Robert (1828-1908): material on resuscitation

Collection of material relating to his pamphlet on the Art of resuscitating the apparently dead, artificial respiration, etc.

Partly holograph MSS., copies of letters, newspaper cuttings, etc.

(a) The Art of Resuscitating the apparently dead. Author's holograph MSS., with extracts and notes made for the original and later editions of his pamphlet, first published in London in 1858. (44 ll. v.s.) [c. 1860-c. 1885].

(b) "The Art of Resuscitating [etc.]. A Lecture given to the Royal Humane Society, London on July 29, 1880": extra-illustrated with newspaper cuttings, copies of letters, etc., the latest dated 1905. Original quarter-calf note-book. 141 pp. + 32 ll. 4to. 22½ × 18 cm.

(c) The Silvester method of restoring the apparently drowned or asphyxiated, with an Answer to Professor Schäfer's Paper, etc. 1898-1904. Unbound. (10 ll. v.s.). This includes a holograph draft of a letter dated 21 May, 1898, and the text of two addresses made to the 'Medical and Chirurgical Society on 8 December, 1903, with reference to Professor E. A. Schäfer's method, of which a printed extract, from the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society's Transactions for 8 December, 1903, and a Proof of Dr Silvester's 'Answer', is included.

The cover of this is dated Jan. 14, 1904.

Produced in London.

c. 1860-1905

1 volume v.s. Unbound, and in a quarter-calf bound note-book.

Presented 1969.

The author qualified in London in 1885, and was later physician to the Clapham General Hospital, and to the Royal Humane Society [Cf. Lancet, 1908, i, p. 878]. Professor E. A. Schäfer, was later Sir Edward Albert Sharpey-Schäfer [1850-1935], F.R.S., M.D., professor of physiology at Edinburgh University.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).