Deathbook

What an interesting study was a surgeon's deathbook! There we should find disasters recorded due to causes quite beyond the ken of all surgeons. In many instances, though the surgeon has done his very best, yet how untoward the result! He felt sure that what was true of his own deathbook was applicable to the deathbook of other surgeons.

The only “G. L.” in the church's deathbook up to 1849 was Garret Lawrence, a Shaker physician and botanist (d. 1837), [...]