By Mathew Carey
Fourth Edition, Improved.
Philadelphia: Printed By the Author January 16, 1794
MATHEW CAREY was a Dublin firebrand, published near-seditious writings -- pamphlets and newspapers -- and was forced to leave Ireland on two occasions. On the first, he fled to Paris, where he met Benjamin Franklin and worked with him at his press in Passy. It was there, too, that he was introduced to the Marquis de Lafayette. Upon his return to Ireland, Carey was even more unwelcome because of the increasingly inflammatory nature of his writings. This time he emigrated to Philadelphia, arriving here in November, 1784, with only a few guineas in his pocket. Lafayette, who was then in America, heard of his plight and sent him a check for four hundred dollars. With this, CAREY established a daily journal and soon after began publishing books and pamphlets. CAREY repaid his debt to Lafayette 40 years later when the aged marquis, then in straitened circumstances, made a triumphal return to the land he helped liberate.
Medical books made their appearance on CAREY's list from the earliest days, the first (1792) being a pamphlet on rabies dedicated to Dr. Benjamin Rush and a treatise on the care of infants. CAREY stayed in Philadelphia during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 and wrote a dramatic account of it that went through four editions in three months [so mine is the last!] and sold 10,000 copies. Some months later, he was the publisher of Dr. Rush's own account of the same calamitous time.
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