Memoria sobre a febre epidemica contagiosa, que grassou em Lisboa desde outubro de 1810 até Agosto de 1811.

Lisbon, Na Impressão Regia, 1812.. FIRST and ONLY EDITION. 4°, recent plain beige wrappers. Woodcut royal arms of Portugal on title page. Foxing and browning. In good condition. (3 ll.), 76 pp., (1 blank l.). *** FIRST and ONLY EDITION of this description of a scarlet fever epidemic in Lisbon. In the preface, the author refers to Benjamin Rush's account of the yellow fever epidemic which struck Philadelphia in 1793. He also refers later in the text to Erasmus Darwin, who had been a major influence on his medical and scientific thinking. The present work is valuable as a relatively early case study of a scarlet fever epidemic.Baeta, after having receiving a degree in philosophy at Coimbra University, was unable to continue with his medical studies at Coimbra due to sympathies with the French Revolution. He fled Portugal in 1797. Completing his medical degree at Edinburgh, he was greatly influenced by Erasmus Darwin, with whom he established a strong friendship. The same year as this dissertation appeared, he published in London Comparative View of the Theories and Practice of Drs. Culler, Brown and Darwin in the Treatment of Fever and of Acute Rheumatism. Later in the year he moved to Lisbon, where he set up a medical practice. In 1821 he was elected to the Portuguese Constitutional Côrtes, gaining fame as one of the most vociferous and effective liberal orators. From 1831 to 1833 he was imprisoned by the absolutists; with the victory of the liberals in 1833 he was again elected to the Côrtes, being named Recebador da Fazenda, a post he occupied until 1836, when he withdrew for political reasons, retiring to his farm at Olivais. Baeta also wrote Dissertatio de febribus intermittentibus præcipue medendis, Edinburgh 1800; Resumo da systema de medicina, e traducção da materia medica do Doutor Erasmo Darwin com varias notas por Henrique Xavier Baeta …. Lisbon 1806; and Extracto das cartas de Maria Wollstonecraft, relativas a Suécia, Noruega e Dinamarca e uma breve notícia da sua vida, also published in Lisbon, 1806.*** Innocêncio III, 190 (giving incomplete collation). Lisbon, Faculdade de Medicina, Catálogo da colecção portuguesa I, 39-40. Pires de Lima, Catálogo da Bibliotheca da Escola Medico-Cirurgica do Porto 292. See Grande Enciclopédia III, 1017-8; also Ferreira de Mira, História da medicina portuguesa, pp. 295-6, 300-1, 326. Porbase cites a single copy, in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal. Jisc repeats British Library only. Not located in Wellcome Library online catalogue. Not located in Aladin. Not located in National Library of Medicine's LocatorPlus, which cites four other works by this author. Not located in Hollis. Not located in Orbis.