Morning's Work: Medical Photographs from the Burns Archive & Collection 1843-1939

This highly praised book presents the most substantial selection of images yet published from the renowned Burns Archive. Over one hundred masterpieces of early medical photography are reproduced along with descriptive texts by Dr. Stanley Burns detailing the medical, sociological, and historical significance of the photographs. Dr. Burns is the author of numerous articles and books including Sleeping Beauty (1990). The rise of modern medicine parallels the development of photography as a documentary tool, and in this broad-based overview of the archive we sense the experimental state of both during the nineteenth century. As a document of the human condition, A Morning's Work shows the pain, suffering, joy, and fear of its subjects as they confront the camera and, we presume, their diagnoses. The hope and horror contained in these images mirror contemporary medicine's "miracles" and failures, and reflect the unchanging nature of the human experience.