GREGORY, JOHN. 1724-1773.


Observations on the Duties and Offices of a Physician; and on the Method of Prosecuting Enquiries in Philosophy London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1770. 8vo (208 x 130 mm). Full contemporary calf by Alexander Milne. Spine worn. FIRST EDITION.Provenance: Cullen House Library (bookplate).WITH: Lectures on the Duties and Qualifications of a Physician. Philadelphia: M. Carey & Son, 1817. 8vo (200 x 115 mm). Recent quarter calf. Occasional pencil notations, printer's error affecting text of p 84. FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.Provenance: Joshua Riley (ink inscription).THE FIRST MODERN THEORY OF MEDICAL ETHICS. Gregory was "the first in the English-language literature to employ philosophical methods to address ethical challenges in medicine and to do so in a self-consciously secular fashion ... In the course of inventing philosophical, secular medical ethics, Gregory also laid the conceptual, secular foundations for the profession of medicine as an intellectual and moral enterprise" (McCullough, 1998). His ideas on medical ethics and the responsibilities of physicians soon spread through Great Britain and the new United States. Among those he influenced was Benjamin Rush, who studied under Gregory at Edinburgh. Accompanied by a copy of Lawrence B. McCullough's John Gregory and the Invention of Professional Medical Ethics and the Profession of Medicine (Dordrecht, 1998) and an engraved portrait of Gregory (1787). GM 8132.