Selected Writings, 1877-1930 by D'Arcy PowerReview by: Charles A. KofoidIsis, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Nov., 1931), pp. 471-472Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/224727 .

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REVIEWS 471

mieux. Je me suis etendu si longuement la-dessus dans mes propres ecrits qu'il n'est pas necessaire d'y insister ici.

Les opinions de l'auteur sont en general d'une grande moderation. Voir par exemple sa discussion de l'origine de la syphilis. D'autre part sa nationalite italienne introduit quelques points de vue nouveaux: j'y ai dej"a fait allusion 'a propos de la medecine romaine ; un autre exemple est sa discussion de la decouverte de la circulation du sang.

Les notes bibliographiques assez nombreuses contiennent beaucoup plus de travaux italiens que n'en mentionnent les livres allemands et anglais. Tant mieux, car la plupart meritent d'etre mieux connus. Je recommande donc vivement aux historiens anglais et americains de consulter ce livre: ils s'etonneront parfois de n'y pas trouver des indications qui leur sont familieres, mais d'autre part ils en trouveront d'autres qui leur sont restees jusqu'ici inconnues. Les illustrations sont abondantes et souvent originales. A ce point de vue encore les ouvrages de GARRISON

et de CASTIGLIONI se completent fort bien. L'auteur habite 'a Trieste et est professeur d'histoire de la medecine

a l'Universite de Padoue. I1 a ecrit un grand nombre d'articles historiques dont beaucoup ont ete signales dans Isis (voir vol. 4 et suivants). Ses principaux ouvrages et memoires sont

La vita e l'opera di SANTORIO CAPODISTRIANO (L. CAPPELLI, Bologne, 1920; Isis, 4, 412); UGO BENZI da Siena e il Trattato utilissimo circa la conservazione della sanitade (Sienne, I92I ; Isis, 5, 504) ; La farmacia italiana del' 400 nella storia dell' arte ceramica (F. LEGA, Faenza, 1922); I1 Libro della pestilenza di GIOVANNI DE ALBERTIS da Capodistria (L. CAP-

PELLI, Bologne, 1924; Isis, 7, 539); I1 Volto di IPPOCRATE. Istorie di medici e medicine di altri tempi (Societ'a Editrice Unitas, Milan, 1925); Storia dell'igiene, Trattato italiano d'Igiene. (Unione Tipogr. Editrice, Turin, 1926) Storia della medicina (Societa Editrice Unitas, Milan, 1927) ; Storia della tubercolosi (F. VALLARDI, Milan, 1930).

GEORGE SARTON.

Sir D'Arcy Power. - Selected writings, I877-I930. X+368 p., i6 pis., I map, 9 figs. in text. Oxford. At the Clarendon Press. I93I

($ 8.50). This collection of essays in the history of medicine was conceived

by members of the Osler Club of which Sir D'ARCY POWER was elected a (( friend )), and carried out by a committee of eminent physicians for presentation to the author of the writings on his seventy-fifth birthday. The task of selection of appropriate subjects from among the six hundred and nine scientific and clinical articles, essays in the field of medical history and biography, and contributions to encyclopedias and dictionaries

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472 ISIS, XVI, 2

will be appreciated by those who scan this classified list of titles which is appended to the selections. The wide range of the field covered between his first article on albuminaria in 1877 to his presidential address before the Section of Comparative Medicine of the Royal Society of Medicine published in I927, and the historical perspective in vhich his writings were ensconced, can be appreciated from the titles listed and those honored in this selection. His first essay into the field of medical history was in the editing of SouTH's Memorial of the Craft of Surgery. This was followed by a long series of unsigned historical articles in the British Medical Journal. No less than one hundred and eighty-four biographies from his pen are included in the Dictionary of National Biography. The keen historical sense which ne had and the analytical skill in setting forth the data he turned up in his manifestly wide reading is nowhere better shown than in his Education of a Surgeon under Thomas Vicary delivered before the Royal College of Surgeons in l920, in the Imaginary Annals in the address before the Section on Comparative Medicine alluded to above, and in that on How the tradition of British Surgery came to America before the American Surgical Association at Baltimore in I924. The essay on Why Samuel Pepys discontinued his Diary requires not only a familiarity with this famous diary, but also a knowledge of the literature of optics as applied to the making of spectacles from ROGER BACON to CHEVALIER. The evidence indicates that the diarist had a hypermetropic astigmatism which could not have been cured by the glasses available in his lifetime.

Among the other titles included in the sixteen selections in this work are John Hunter, a Martyr to Science, in which the evidence is marshalled to show that JOHN HUNTER died not from aingina pectoris, as stated by Sir EVERARD HOME, but rather of syphilis. In 1767 HUNTER inoculated himself with pus from a patient with gonorrhoea, in order to determine whether or not this disease was identical with syphilis. The history of the experiment and the later history of the experimenter clearly show in the light of modern knowledge of venereal diseases that this zeal for knowledge not only resulted in his later illnesses, but ultimately cost him his life. This episode in the career of the founder of the Hun- terian t1radition is significant of the atmosphere of scientific inquiry created by him and transmitted to his followers.

The book with its very ample index is a mine of medical lore, a collection of superb examples of British scientific historical writing, and a most enjoyable volume to read.

CHARLES A. KOFOID.

M. E. M. Walker. - Pioneers of Putblic Health. The story of some

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