Rare Signed Copy of Lincoln's Jewish Chiropodist and Spy, Dr. Issachar Zacharie's Book

Background

Little about Issachar Zacharie is known for a certainty, and that little is so contradictory one might easily know nothing at all. He was, for instance, incontestably - indeed, flamboyantly - a chiropodist; but where he studied, when he was certified, how he did what he did - no one knows. One might, say, cite as fact, that Zacharie was accredited a chiropodist in London in 1837, having been the student of Sir Astley Paston Cooper; and a dual self might remark, were that so, Zacharie would have been twelve, or possibly even ten, at the time. Diplomas, earned later, were claimed, too, from the Academy of Medicine at Havana, and the University of New York; yet predictably, no records show him having attended either institution. But if his healing skills came from nowhere, they went far: Dr. Zacharie performed his marvels on bunions and corns in Baltimore and Philadelphia, Stockton and Sacramento, in Richmond and D.C - and finally New York. On his travels to Washington, he famously attended, and then befriended, Abraham Lincoln and, given the implausible nature of almost everything about the good doctor, implausibly became the President's confidential agent and spy. Of course, what he did for Lincoln in this connection is little known, and how Lincoln even involved himself so intimately with a man so incredible, little is understood.

In 1860, before he met Lincoln, Zacharie published a book, Surgical and Practical Observations on the Diseases of the Human Foot in New York which shared, at the very least, the exact same title of book published in England by John Eisenberg's fifteen years earlier. Inasmuch as it seems that Zacharie could barely write - he used a secretary for his correspondence - his authorship of an original tome of foot diseases has subsequently been deemed suspect. Nonetheless, there was no suspicion of plagiarism when, in 1876, he published a revised edition of his book in England. What was questioned, however, by the editors of the English Medical Directory, was the nature of his medical degree. But Zacharie, sailed through that tempest, as he did all others, and died, respected and rich, in London, at the turn of the 20th century.

This signed volume, with his own shaky inscription, is marvelously rare.Signed Book, being Zacharie's own Surgical and practical observations on the diseases of the human foot: with instructions for their treatment (New York: Charles B. Norton. 1860), octavo, First Edition; inscribed in pencil on the flyleaf "by the author" to C.W. Hale, June 25, 1864. Excessively rare.