It was a principle among the ancients, that acute diseases are from Heaven, and chronical from ourselves; the dart of death, indeed, falls from Heaven, but we poison it from our own misconduct: to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly. Numerous references are given to the extensive lore dealing with the evil eyetalismans, amulets, and charms, and to the cramp-rings, on which Raymond Crawfurd has written so learnedly. In the appositeness and fecundity of his quotations Parkes Weber reminds one of Robert Burton, and nowhere in literature is to be found such a collection as that given in this section on the satires, sayings, and epigrams relating to physicians and their art. He quotes a delicious one which I picked up many years ago from the Spectator: Wise Arruns, asked "How long will Caius live?" The author turns out to be the well-known scholar, the Rev. A. J. Church. Part 3, dealing with the aspects of death in coins, medals, and tokens, is one of the longest, and of extraordinary fullness. IIlustrations are given of coins from the fifth century B.C. down to the medals struck in Germany for the sinking of the Lusitania, To many the book will be a revelation; while the learned author disclaims an attempt to make an exhaustive treatise on the iconography of death, or a complete anthology of poetry and epigrams relating to it, he has made by far the most important contribution in English on the subject. The author's new preface is preceded by an original poem on the mystery of pain and death, on which his own views are worth quoting. The balance of evidence (which, however, everyone will and must admit, is mainly of a subjective kind) seems to me to point to there being something more of immortality in human souls than can be included under August Weismann's theory of the immortality of the germplasm of animals and plants. Whether or not this 'something more' is quite as much as a personal 'immortality of souls' is a question which should not really affect us. One can understand the possibility of a kind of reward or punishment, and of continued physical activity after the death of the body, without being absolutely convinced of personal immortality." As an introduction to the literature of subjects with which we have to deal daily, the work should go in the bedside library of every physician. May I end with a personal note? Friends have associated my name in a kind way with a good many books, but I have never before had a dedication which illustrates the curiosa felicitas of the scholar-student. WILLIAM OSLER. BENJAMIN RUSH AND HIS SERVICES TO AMERICAN EDUCATION. By Harry G. Good, Ph.D., Professor of Education, Bluffton College. X+219 pages. Price $1.60 net. Berne, Indiana: Witness Press. 1918. There have been so many studies of the American Sydenham's career and labors written from the medical point of view, that it is refreshing and timely to find him depicted from another standpoint, and when the task is performed by so well fitted an expert as Professor Good, we may be sure it will be well done. Rush is, of course, well known as a teacher of medicine, but the fact that he wrote often and well on educational topics not pertaining to his profession, and his instrumentality in the foundation of Dickinson College, is not familiar to many. In a very complete bibliography of his writings appended to this book, those on educational subjects form a conspicuous part, as do his articles advocating the abolition of slavery, prohibition and penal reform. We of the profession know with what vigor he was wont to enunciate his very pronounced views on medical subjects, and he carried no less vehemence into his publication on other matters. Professor Good bestows much praise on the enlightened and advanced opinions which Rush held in educational matters. Rush showed no less aggressiveness and determination when he came to the practical application of his ideas in the foundation of a college. Good describes how it was principally due to his initiative, determination, and influence with his contemporaries that Dickinson College came into being and was given the impetus which in subsequent generations has raised it from small beginnings to an excellent rank among the smaller colleges of the United States. The book only serves to add to the great desire of those who are interested in Rush, that some day an adequate biography of the great man will be written, one which will explain the obscure political secrets which are interwoven with his history as a public man and throw some light on his transactions during the critical period of the foundation of the United States. FRANCIS R. PACKARD THE HISTORY OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL. By Norman Moore, M.D. 2 vols. quarto. Vol. I, pp. xxii +614, 41 plates. Vol. II, pp. xiv + 992, 6 plates. London: Pearson, 1918. The very distinguished author of these volumes was born in 1847 and educated at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, of which he is an Honorary Fellow. On leaving the University he entered as a student of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and has been closely connected with that institution for nearly half a century. In 1883 he was elected Assistant Physician, in 1902 Physician and in 1911 Consulting Physician. In 1918 Dr. Moore became President of the Royal College of Physicians of London, a foundation with which his connection has been as close and as long as with St. Bartholomew's Hospital. Dr. Moore has been recognized for many years not only as an eminent physician, but as a most learned medical historian of high scholarship and literary attainments and especially equipped for medieval studies. Personally he has earned the respect and affection of generations of students and younger workers, not only by his learning and clinical skill, but by geniality of character and an unrivaled power as a raconteur. This truly monumental work by Dr. Moore undoubtedly marks an epoch in the history of medicine. The preparation has been a labor of love of thirty years' duration and it is now presented by its author to the Hospital where so much of his life has been spent. It is a gift in which any institution might well glory. In attempting to deal with a document of this order the reviewer is in a serious difficulty; to summarize it is impossible, to criticise it seems impertinent, to praise it would be superfluous. He will, therefore, not attempt any of these, but will devote himself rather to some attempt to place the work in what appears to him its rightful position in the literature of Medical History. So far as English writing is concerned the earliest important medico-historical author was certainly John Freind (16751728). His work "The History of Physick from the time of Galen to the beginning of the XVIth century chiefly with regard to Practice," was drafted while in prison (1722) under a charge of complicity in a Jacobite plot, and first printed in 1725. It is not entirely original, but is of value and interest and may be read with profit even at the present day, and is especially remarkable for its date in the attempt it makes to trace the continuity of ideas from age to age. In his own century Freind was followed by several of his countrymen; by Richard Mead (1672-1754), eminent alike as bibliophile physician and patron of learning, who contributed the "Diseases Mentioned in Sacred Writings" (1749), as well as a work on the physicians of ancient Rome (1724), and on whose advice, stimulus and expense, certain Arabic medical works were rendered into English; by Edward Milward (?-1757), who wrote an "Account of Alexander Trallian" (1734); and by James Greive (?-1778), who published in 1756 an annotated translation of Celsus that remains the best in our language. The only other medicohistorical document of any importance that appeared in England in the 18th century is the "History of the Origin of Medicine" (1776) of John Coakley Lettsom (17441815), a man of remarkable attainments who exhibited some of the newer influences of which we shall presently speak. and weakness of English medico-historical work, the most important contributions in this department having been made by William Munk in his "Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London" (Ist edition 1861; 2d edition 1878), Benjamin Ward Richardson in his "Disciples of Esculapius" (1900) and Dr. Norman Moore himself, who has contributed a host of admirable medical biographies to the "Dictionary of National Biography" (18851912). In this prevalent biographical tone English, and, it may be added, American medical scholarship, have been somewhat isolated from the main current of Historical Research to which we may now return. In the meantime the prevailing biographical note of British medical scholarship had long asserted itself. As early as the 17th century Baldwin Hamey, the younger (1600-1676), prepared a series of sketches of his contemporaries, which remain in manuscript but have been much used by later writers. In 1715 appeared also what was probably the first systematic medical bibliography, the "Bibliographiæ Anatomicæ Specimen" by the distinguished anatomist, James Douglas (1675-1742). This important contribution undoubtedly formed the basis of the well-known work on the same subject by his friend Albrecht Haller. Numerous other attempts at medical biography and bibliography were made, but among them we need only refer to Edward Milward (?-1757), who published his "Letter to all Orders of Learned Men concerning a History of the Lives of British Physical and Chirurgical Authors" in 1704, and the "Biographical Memoirs of Medicine in Great Britain from the Revival of Literature to the time of Harvey," by John Aikin (1747-1822) which appeared in 1780 and contained accounts of fifty-five authors from the time of Gilbertus Anglicus to that of Glisson. From Aikin onward biography has been the strength The year 1776 is a landmark in the history of scholarship, for there then appeared a volume which was not only an extraordinary feat of learning, but a work of the highest and most original genius. In that year Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), now in his fortieth year, published the first volume of the greatest of all historical writings. During the twelve years preceding 1788, when the last volumes of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" saw the light, a revolution in historical thought and historical method had been effected comparable only to that of the general acceptance of evolutionary doctrine in the following century, to which movement indeed it is related. It is not too much to say that Gibbon's was the first great evolutionary historical work, that evolutionary teaching is implicit in the "Decline and Fall"; and that the evolutionary school of historians was a necessary preliminary to the evolutionary school of biologists. From Gibbon's date onward all historical work of permanent interest and value became instinct with his spirit; from his time onward the main duty of the historian has been the demonstration of continuity, the process by which the phenomena of each age are derived from the preceding age and pass into that which follows, and the secular interaction of forces has riveted the attention of the ablest historical writers. As the years have gone by and as history has come more and more into line with biological teaching, a yet further phase has appeared or rather has logically developed from Gibbon's method. No longer content with relations of the deeds of kings and conquerors, nor even of statesmen and religious leaders, we seek to know how these men came to be what they were, and we look to our historians to tell us of the origin and development of our economic and social systems. Their search is thus less often among the annals and treaties of states, and more often in merchants' accounts and folk tales. Even the grandiose monuments and records of conquering things are no longer taken literally, but by means of ethnological researches and archæological exploration we read between the lines of their statements and often enough find them little else than lies. Men, we know, may be largely explained as the result of their inheritance and environment, and since the most interesting and important part of Man is the thoughts and ideas of which he is the carrier, we are beginning to write the history of thought with reference to the inheritance and environment of those ideas and thoughts. With this newer and nobler view of history in our minds let us turn to the achievements of English speaking peoples in the history of our special subject. The striking feature of Freind's work, and of Leclerc's, who preceded him, is that they seem prophetically though dimly to have perceived the attitude of the later historians, and to have devoted themselves to some extent to the demonstration of continuity. It is not, however, until we get to the very end of the 18th century, that we encounter a true medical historian of the first rank in the person of Kurt Polykarp Sprengel (1766-1833), whose "Pragmatic History of Medicine," published at Halle between 1792 and 1813, is not only a monu ment of historical method, but a mine of information that is hardly yet worked out. Sprengel exhibits to the full the influence of the new school. On the continent other works of similar character rapidly followed on Sprengel's, but in spite of the example of our great historian of science, William Whewell (1794-1866), England had long to wait for a work of medical scholarship that did not suffer from the biographical obsession. This perhaps was owing to the suspicion in this country of the work of Auguste Comte (1798-1857), who more than any other man opposed the static aspect of history and, foreseeing its biological meaning, summed up his view in the aphorism that "an idea cannot be understood until its history is known." His phrase would provide an admirable text for a history of medicine. In 1844 there appeared from the pen of Francis Adams of Banchory (1796-1861) the first work of scholarship of the front rank that had been produced by an English medical writer. But his "Seven Books of Paulus Ægineta" (1844) is more than a work of scholarship, it is a true historical work "embracing" as its sub-title, not unjustly, claims, "a complete view of the knowledge possessed by the Greeks, Romans, and Arabians on all subjects connected with medicine and surgery." This is still a standard work and remains by far the best in English on the medicine of classical antiquity. In spite of the high standard of the other works of Adams the "Extant Works of Aretæus the Cappadocian" (1846) and the "Genuine Works of Hippocrates" (1849), his "Paulus Ægineta" must be considered his masterpiece. It contains much real history well arranged and indexed and is especially valuable as one of the few works of medical scholarship in which the clinical experience of the author definitely asserts itself. The "Origin of Species" had already seen the light for five years before the most important piece of medical scholarship that has yet appeared in English was issued from the press. This work is most curiously not by a medical man, but by a clergyman of the Church of England. The "Leechdoms Wortcunning and Starcraft of Early England" (1864-1866) of the Rev. Oswald Cockayne (1807-1873) conceals under a maddening combination of misarrangement, perverse conservatism, vicious English, and hideous typography, a mass of learning, patient labor, and scientific method that places it, as it appears to the present writer, without rival as the most important and fundamental work of medical scholarship of any English writer. The basis of the work had been prepared in the previous hundred years by the recovery of the Anglo-Saxon language from the manuscripts by the labor of such men as Hickes, Kemble, Thorpe, Wright, and Bosworth, but to the edifice that they had constructed Cockayne made definite and permanent additions and his work will always be treated with respect, not only by medical historians, but by all concerned with the origins of the English language. On account of its linguistic and philological value, of the originality of its conception, of the thoroughness of its scholarship, of its interest as our source book of Western barbarian medicine, and in spite of its absence of literary form and repellent presentation, we are convinced that posterity will regard the work of Cockayne as the most important original English contribution to the History of Medicine. Cockayne's work is especially important since the Anglo-Saxon Leechdoms contain the only considerable remnants of a barbarian medical system that have survived to our day from the period of the decline of the Roman Empire. These remains, properly sifted, can be made to yield a fairly accurate and adequate idea of the medicine and science of the Teutonic tribes of northern Europe. After Cockayne the second place, as it appears to us, may be disputed between the work of Dr. Norman Moore which lies before us, and the "Paulus Ægineta" of Francis Adams. In all these three works of the front rank we are inclined to think that posterity will observe with regret a relative absence of regard for the results of continental scholarship, a respect in which they are excelled by several living medical scholars, and by at least one who is no longer with us. The late J. F. Payne (18401910) was a man of wide learning and general culture, who possessed a fine literary sense and was fully acquainted with the revolution that the studies of the medieval school of continental historians had accomplished in the history of medicine. Payne was especially familiar with the great triumph of that school in the recovery of the Salernitan literature, and the use of this knowledge by him gives his reinvestigation of Cockayne's work a distinct historical value. But on the whole we may say that this writer's extreme diffidence and exaggerated caution prevented his actual historical performances from approaching within measurable distance of his great powers and reputation, and his work must rank definitely below that of Cockayne, Adams, or Dr. Moore. Turning again to the volumes of Dr. Moore that lie before us, we find the entire first and one-third of the second occupied with a detailed description of the charters and other material that have survived concerning the St. Bartholomew's Hospital from 1123-1537. This collection is by far the fullest and most complete that has been attempted for any such institution. It is unlikely that any future worker will find even gleanings in a field where the learning and industry of Dr. Moore have garnered so long and so faithfully, and this work will remain permanently as a source book and a type of what such a history should be. The large number of illustrations, consisting as they do almost exclusively of beautiful reproductions of charters, will, in addition, |