A Chicago doctor prints 125 copies of his stories about alchemists and old medicine
Felix Cunha’s 1939 essays include Prague’s Gold Alley, where Emperor Rudolf II’s alchemists made fraudulent promises, and a reproduced sixteenth-century medical text. He signed this copy for Dr. Leonard Carmichael, though that reading is provisional.
The story
As its title suggests, After Hours is a doctor’s off-duty book: essays on the history of medicine, pharmacy and alchemy, told as stories and illustrated from early books. Felix Cunha, M.D., an American gastroenterologist and medical historian, had it privately printed in 1939.
One essay goes to Gold Alley in Prague in the time of Emperor Rudolf II, and to the alchemists whose promises proved fraudulent. Another reproduces a sixteenth-century medical text, so the reader sees how the old remedies looked on the page. The Norman Press in Chicago printed just 125 copies in December 1939, set in Caslon types on Worthy Roxburghe paper: a small edition, made with care, outside the ordinary book trade.
This copy is in cream-grey cloth with the title stamped in gilt, a little discoloured and rubbed, and the pages seen are clean. The author inscribed it, apparently to Dr. Leonard Carmichael, though the reading of the name is provisional. Two loose handwritten lists came with it; whether they belong to its history is not known. It has not been collated.
Details
- Date
- 1939
- Publisher
- Norman Press, Chicago, Illinois
- Edition
- 125 copies privately printed
- Binding
- cloth: Cream/gray cloth, title gilt-stamped on upper board
- Condition
- Gray/cream publisher's cloth with gold-stamped title and minor discoloration/rubbing; apparently clean internal pages in the photographed openings; authorial presentation ink inscription on blank preliminary leaf; two loose handwritten lists present, unproven connection. Completeness not collated.
- Presentation note
- To Dr. Leonard Carmichael / with best wishes, always. / Felix Cunha
