The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes with Illustrations

A lovely cover (left) graces the Riverside Press’ 1890 printing from Cambridge, Massachusetts, of The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes with Illustrations. The senior O. W. Holmes (right) was a celebrated author and physician. Not surprisingly, “Old Ironsides” is the first of three poems featured on page 1. Originally published in the Boston Daily Advertiser, that poem is credited with rescuing a “veteran frigate of the War of 1812,” the USS Constitution from the scrapyard. Still commissioned to this day, the Constitution is berthed in the Charlestown Navy Yard of Boston National Historical Park. (Copyright © the American Society of Anesthesiologists, Inc.)