Pioneers of Public Health by M. E. M. WalkerReview by: Charles A. KofoidIsis, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Nov., 1931), pp. 472-474Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/224728 .

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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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REVIEWS 473'

benefactors of the human race. With a foreword by Sir HUMPHRY

ROLLESTON. XVI+27C) P., 23 pls. New York, MACMILLAN CO.

I930. ($ 4-50)- The authoress of this (( tribute to the bright memory of my only son

who died in the tropics )) has compiled biographies of twenty-one leaders in the field of hygiene, preventive and exotic medicine. Of the leaders :selected for inclusion twelve are British, four are from the United States, three are of Germanic origin, and two are from France. The bacteriolo- gists naturally take a prominent place and include PASTEUR who founded the science, KOCH who developed its relations to the greatest of human plagues, and LISTER who established its lasting significance to surgery. The protozoologists and parasitologists have an even larger numerical representation, including TIMOTHY LEWIS who noted the organisms in the faeces of victims of cholera, LAVERAN who discovered the malarial parasite in the human blood, MANSON who found Microfilaria in the mosquito and thus laid the foundation for the later control of disease by elimination or avoidance of insect vectors, and LEISHMAN for whom ,a group of blood parasites are named. Epidemiology is represented by THOMAS SYDENHAM, the English Hippocrates whose views on this subject have of late been revived, by General W. C. GORGAS who applied the principles of this science on a grand scale in the Canal Zone and whose trained personnel now serves the extensive and successful nmedical service of the United Fruit Company in the American tropics, and by Dr. WALTER REED whose sacrifice established the basis of the scientific knowledge of yellow fever.

Hygiene is represented by PETTENKOFER who made the subject respected in academic circles, by LIND the naval, and by PRINGLE the military hygienist. Public health and its administration are introduced by FRANK,

a ((modern of the moderns, )) CHADWJCK, SIMON, and PARKES who fostered public interest and en-terprise in this field in Great Britain, and by HER-

MANN BIGGS who demonstrated in the United States the value of this work in the greatest metropolis of America. Preventive medicine is represented by many, if not all, of the names listed above, but preemi- nently by JENNER the introducer of vaccination. The significance of vital statistics was persistently advocated by the layman LEMUEL SHATTUCK

in Massachusetts, and by WILLIAM FARR in Great Britain. It is doubtless impossible to select candidates for such biographical

distinction without omitting many whose claims for representation are great. Nevertheless, the omission of WILLIAM T. SEDGWICK the American sanitarian who linked engineering practice to public health interests in the United States and elsewhere, is inexcusable. To a like degree -the work of Sir RONALD Ross on malaria has a permanent importance

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474 ISIS, XVI, 2

far exceeding that of not a few of those included in this Valhalla of the benefactors of the human race.

CHARLES A. KOFOID.

Richmond Cranston Holcomb. - A century with Norfolk Naval Hospital 1830-I930. 543 pp., 42 ills. Portsmouth, Virginia Printcraft Publ. Co. I930.

Hospitals in their history reflect progress in the medical sciences, though some phases of it are often somewhat belated in appearance. On the whole, however, they exhibit the more permanent contributions to medical progress which have stood the tests of practical utility, effective- ness, and success elsewhere. In its growth a naval hospital adds to these scientific factors those which arise from the internal growth of the navy itself, in its changing marine, mechanical, and engineering develop- ments, and from both internal and external political influences. Most of all its expansions follow upon the catastrophe of war.

The Norfolk Naval Hospital is the main hospital of the United States Navy and its history is bound up with that of the Medical Department of this arm of the government. Naval surgeons were provided in the U. S. Navy when it was established by Congress in i776 with ratings and pay proportioned to the number of guns carried by the ship. Examining boards appointed by the several states were recommended by Congress in I777 and regulations providing for the care of sick and wounded were set up. At the close of the Revolution the ships of the navy were all sold, and a Navy Department was not created until I798, when medical officers were again commissioned as surgeons and surgeon's mates. The first of these surgeons was Dr. GEORGE BALFOUR and he took charge of the first marine hospital in Norfolk County. Va. A Medical Department for both army and navy was created in I799 and the first appropriation was made for equipment for care of the sick.

The sick were located on the main deck between two gun posts, hence this space came to be known as the ((sick bay )). Limes and lemons were used in i8oo to ward off scurvy. Navy regulations prescribing the duties of medical officers were established in i8i8. The surgeon's mate visited, bled, dressed wounds, gave medicines with his own hands, put up prescriptions, kept the cock-pit and instruments clean, inspected the coppers, and gave out liquors to his aid the loblolly boy for distribution, Battle surgery was carried on in the heat and darkness of the cockpit below the waterline. Vinegar was used as an antiseptic, rum and lauda- num for deadening of pain, and straps for restraint.

In 1855 a yellow fever epidemic followed the arrival of a steamship from St. Thomas in the West Indies at Norfolk which reported two

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