A Brief Rule to Guide the Common-People of New England How to Order Themselves and Theirs in the Small Pocks, or Measels [First published in 1677/8, reprinted in 1702 and 1721-22.] (Publications of the Institute of the History of Medicine, The Johns Hopk…

liv, 16 pp. Includes fold-out facsimile of of 1677/8 broadside, and facsimiles of the subsequent two pamphlet editions, representing all known editions of this work. Includes an extensive introduction providing historical, bibliographical, and typographical information about each version, as well as a biography of the author and an account of the smallpox epidemic and other diseases affecting colonial New England. Thacher provides advice, occasioned by the 1677 smallpox epidemic responsible for the deaths of more than seven hundred colonists, was based largely on the research being done on the topic by Thomas Sydenham in England. Garrison-Morton 5406: 'The first medical publication of North America and the only one to appear in the 17th century. The sheet was reprinted, with a bibliographical and biographical study, in Bibliotheca Medica Americana, Vol. 1, Baltimore, 1937.' Reissue of Sabin 95192, 95193, 95194; Evans 242, 1096; Wing T829.