With the new printing of The Gold-Headed Cane, a reprint of the 1884 edition, the saddest of all with the distinctly meager additions of Dr. Munk, The Gold-Headed Cane now has been printed in eight different forms, seven editions, and some reprints. The first, or second, edition made one year later certainly would have been much more suitable to reprint. Even the fifth or sixth edition with lively discussions and descriptions of previous editions and much miscellaneous history of the book itself would have been better. Indeed, the seventh edition which Bill Kerr and Jim Waring brought out in 1953, published by Charles Thomas, is still in print.
When I reviewed the gold-headed cane books in the Archives of Internal Medicine some time ago, (108:805, 1961) I owned copies of the first, third, fourth, sixth, and seventh edition. Between the time I reviewed the books and receipt of the