Thackeray's 'Works' in twenty-four volumes, to which two additional volumes of hitherto uncollected writings were added in 1886. A similarly elaborate reissue of 'Romola,' with Leighton's illustrations, followed in 1880, and a like reprint of Fielding's 'Works' in 1882. The last of these ventures proved the least successful. In 1872 Smith inaugurated a department of medical literature by purchasing, at the sale of the stock of a firm of medical publishers, the publishing rights in Ellis's 'Demonstrations of Anatomy' and Quain and Wilson's 'Anatomical Plates.' These works formed a nucleus of an extended medical library the chief part of which Smith, Elder, & Co. brought into being between 1873 and 1887. Ernest Hart acted as adviser on the new medical side of the business, and at his suggestion Smith initiated two weekly periodicals dealing with medical topics, which Hart edited. The earlier was the 'London Medical Record,' of which the first number appeared in January 1873; the second was the 'Sanitary Record,' of which the first number began in July 1874. After some four years a monthly issue was substituted for the weekly issue in each case, and both were ultimately transferred to other hands. The 'Medical Record' won a high reputation among medical men through its copious reports of medical practice in foreign countries. The most notable contributions to medical literature which Smith undertook were, besides Ellis's 'Demonstrations of Anatomy,' Holmes's 'Surgery,' Bristowe's 'Medicine,' Playfair's 'Midwifery,' Marshall's 'Anatomy for Artists,' and Klein's 'Atlas of Histology.' He liked the society of medical men, and while the medical branch of his business was forming he frequently entertained his medical authors at a whist party on Saturday nights in his rooms at Waterloo Place.
Of several new commercial ventures outside the publishing office with which Smith identified himself at this period, one was the Aylesbury Dairy Company, in the direction of which he was for many years associated with his friends Sir Henry Thompson and Tom Hughes. Other mercantile undertakings led to losses, which were faced boldly and cheerfully. It was almost by accident that he engaged in the enterprise which had the most conspicuous and auspicious bearing on his financial position during the last twenty years of his life. When he was dining with Ernest Hart early in 1872, his host called his attention to some natural aerated water, a specimen of which had just been brought to this country for the first time from the Apollinaris spring in the valley of the Ahr, to the east of the Rhine, between Bonn and Coblenz. Smith, who was impressed by the excellence of the water, remarked half laughingly that he would like to buy the spring. These casual words subsequently bore important fruit. Negotiations were opened between Smith and Mr. Edward Steinkopff, a German merchant in the city of London, whereby a private company was formed in 1873 for the importation of the Apollinaris water into England, Hart receiving an interest in the profits. A storehouse was taken in the Adelphi, and an office was opened in Regent Street within a short distance of Waterloo Place. As was his custom in all his enterprises, Smith at the outset gave close personal attention to the organisation of the new business, which grew steadily from
