History of Medicine

Abstract

THE first volume of this history of medicine by the professor of the subject in the University of Vienna deals with the period db initio mundi to the end of the Middle Ages. “A somewhat confused preface by Sir William Osier introduces the work, asserting on the first page that professorships on the subject have been established in English universities, and on the second page that there is not in this country a single chair of the history of medicine.” The Fitzpatrick lectureship on the history of medicine in the Royal College of Physicians of London is mentioned, but Sir William Osier fails to perceive that it was established with the obvious intention that the lecturer should always be a physician learned in medicine, as well as in the part of its history which he might select for his lectures. The courses which have been delivered during the past nine years by three members of the University of Oxford and two of the University of Cambridge have shown the usefulness of such a provision. They have been worthy examples of the same school as “The History of Physick from the time of Galen to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century,” written by Dr. John Freind in 1723, a book which is at once pleasant reading, sound medicine, and good history.

History of Medicine.

By Prof. M. Neuburger. Vol. i. Translated by E. Playfair. Pp. x + 404. (London: H. Frowde and Hodder and Stoughton, 1910.) Price 25s. net.