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There are 998 cases contained in the volumes. Each case history lists patient's name, age, occupation, birthplace, marital status, complaint, and family history. Gedding's examinations include notations on weight, appetite, diet, color of sputum, hemoptysis, as well as results of percussion and auscultation. Occasionally included are letters from the patient's referring physician to Geddings. Although the entries rarely list a diagnosis, most of the patients Geddings saw were suffering from pulmonary diseases or tuberculosis.
Almost all the cases in these volumes date from the winter and early spring: Geddings moved his practice to New Hampshire in the summer. Most of the patients Geddings saw were Northerners. There are a few entries made by an unidentified physician post-dating Geddings' death in August 1892.
History and Biography
Geddings was born at Charleston, S.C. in 1838. His father, Eli Geddings and two of his brothers, Frederick and Edward, were also physicians. He studied at the Medical College of South Carolina and abroad in Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the medical corps of the Confederate Army and rose to be Chief Medical Purveyor of the Army of Northern Virginia. After the war, he returned to Vienna where he did advanced work in dermatology with Hebra and Kaposi.
Upon his return to South Carolina, he seems to have abandoned the idea of becoming a dermatologist. He moved to Aiken, S.C. for his wife's health and was convinced that it offered an ideal climate for sufferers of pulmonary diseases and tuberculosis. He later alternated his practice between Aiken and Bethlehem, N.H., in the White Mountains where he died on August 27, 1892.
Geddings was the author of Zur Anatomie des Lupus erythematosus (Vienna, 1868); Aiken; or Climate Cure (Charleston, 1869), which he co-authored with Amory Coffin (the 2d edition, 1872, was entitled Aiken and its Climate); Aiken as a Health Station (Charleston, 1877); Report of the Results in Thirty-one Cases of Phthisis Treated at Aiken, S.C., during the Season, 1878-79 (New York, 1879); Hints for Invalids Visiting Southern Health Resorts (New York, 1879); and, "Notes on the Summer Climate" in White Mountain Village of Bethlehem as a Resort for Health and Pleasure (Boston, 1880).
Organization
Patient names and case numbers can be found at the start of each volume
There are 998 cases contained in the volumes. Each case history lists patient's name, age, occupation, birthplace, marital status, complaint, and family history. Geddings' examinations include notations on weight, appetite, diet, color of sputum, hemoptysis, as well as results of percussion and auscultation. Occasionally included are letters from the patient's referring physician to Geddings. Although the entries only rarely list a diagnosis, it is clear that most of the patients Geddings saw were suffering from pulmonary diseases or tuberculosis.
Almost all the cases date from the winter and early spring: Geddings moved his practice to New Hampshire in the summer. Notes in these volumes indicate that he maintained a separate set of casebooks for the patients he saw there. The bulk of the patients in these volumes were Northerners.
There are a few entries made by an unidentified physician post-dating Geddings' death in August 1892.
Subject Headings and Related Records
Administrative Information
Purchase, Argosy Book Store, 1951.