The invention of contact tracing. First edition of this key work in the history of epidemiology by 'one of the outstanding medical practitioners of his time', who introduced contact tracing and isolation wards to British medicine and was an early proponent of inoculation (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). Rare, not in Garrison-Morton and with only one copy listed in auction records since 1979. WorldCat lists only electronic versions, but individuals searches reveal print copies at the British Library, Wellcome Collection, Huntington, and no doubt others. Bound together with a work by a fellow Edinburgh student and colleague at the Chester Infirmary.

Haygarth was educated at St. John's College Cambridge, Edinburgh, Paris, and Leiden, and was tutored in mathematics by the surgeon John Dawson (1734-1820), who later provided much of the statistical data for his medical publications. He was appointed to Chester Infirmary in 1766 and spent the rest of his career there, establishing a wide network of contacts that included many philanthropists and dissenting intellectuals.

'In 1774 he conducted a population census in Chester which included questions about typhus fever and smallpox. In his subsequent paper, Observations on the Population and Diseases of Chester in 1774, he advocated removing poor fever patients to separate fever wards. He also ascertained that out of a population of 14,713 in 1774, only 1060 had never contracted smallpox. The high mortality rate arising from smallpox in Chester led him to concentrate on investigating how to prevent the disease. The Smallpox Society founded in Chester in 1778 (largely as a result of Haygarth's initiative) was formed to promote inoculation and to prevent casual contraction of the disease. Haygarth used the term "casual smallpox", reflecting his belief that it was a preventable casualty rather than a "natural" disease. By 1782 the number of local deaths from casual smallpox had reduced by nearly half, and Leeds and Liverpool were to follow Chester's example. In recognition of his work Haygarth was elected to the Royal Society on 8 February 1781. In 1784 Haygarth's Inquiry how to Prevent the Small Pox was published. This attracted wide interest and approval and its translation into French and German helped to establish Haygarth's international reputation. His theories were further elaborated in his Sketch of a plan to exterminate the casual small pox from Great Britain and to introduce general inoculation (1793), which was dedicated to the king. Haygarth's plan involved compulsory inspection of homes and general inoculation, with rewards for information about smallpox outbreaks. He was now at the peak of his fame, but his plan failed to win acceptance in the reactionary political climate of the 1790s, which was hostile to grand reform schemes' (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).

The work with which Haygarth's is bound is the first edition of Dissertation on the Influence of the Passions upon Disorders of the Body by the esteemed physician John Falconer (1744-1824). Falconer trained alongside Haygarth at Edinburgh where both joined the milieu of 'pioneers of a social medicine which used statistical comparisons to tackle problems of urban public health'... Like Falconer, Haygarth joined the staff of the Chester Infirmary in the late 1760s, and his subsequent control of its fever wards received widespread acclaim. Falconer, however, applied his Edinburgh education to the evaluation of balneology [medicinal waters] after his transfer to Bath in 1770' (ODNB).

First edition; 8vo (9.5 x 12 cm); both texts complete with half-titles, the Haygarth with folding table and errata on the verso of the final leaf of text and the Falconer with three-page integral publisher's ads at rear, contemporary ownership signature to each title, very light dampstain affecting the preliminaries of the Falconer, and just a little faint spotting but overall contents clean; contemporary tree calf, spine gilt in compartments with pomegranate tools, red morocco labels; remnants of bookplate, calf a little rubbed and marked with some minor old repairs, a very good, unsophisticated copy; 223pp, 105pp.