Superstition and Disease ¹

Abstract

THIS volume represents the Fitzpatrick letures for 1912 delivered at the Royal College of Physicians. Dr. Crawford has treated his subject as much in its mental and moral aspects as in its physical, and the result is a wise and very interesting book. In a few chapters he gives us a vivid presentment of the long series of epidemics which devastated Europe and the Levant between the days of Moses in Egypt and those of Napoleon at Jaffa. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have all been pressed into the service, and the thirty-one plates in the hook testify to the frequency with which the world's great artists have found inspiration in the terrible scenes of a plague-stricken city.