(1) Greek Medicine in Rome: The Fitz Patrick Lectures on the History of Medicine delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1909–10, with other Historical Essays (2) Arabian Medicine: Being the Fitz Patrick Lectures delivered at the College of Physicians in November 1919 and November 1920

Abstract

SINCE the great revival of historic interest in the eighteenth century the labour of historians has been directed mainly towards political institutions. Sociological and cultural history have been of much slower growth, and we are only now beginning to be able to treat the history of European life as a whole, to look upon it as one majestic panorama developing from the early Mediterranean culture in which first Egypt, then Crete, then Greece was leader, to the time when Rome herself, in receipt of tributaiy streams from Syria, Persia, Mesopotamia, and India, acted as the cultural intermediary to the European peoples, and, finally, to the diffusion by those peoples of the infectious elements of the ancient tradition throughout the world. It will thus one day become possible to present this panorama with its various aspects in adequate relation to each other. Mr. Marvin, in his “Living Past,” and Mr. Wells, in his “Outline of History,” have produced tentative sketches in that direction. Such works point to a time when the history of civilisation, the most absorbing of all topics, will form the humane basis of education. There are, however, large departments in which the material is not yet to hand for this consummation. Especially defective is our record of certain aspects of the development of thought. Formal thought, philosophy, has, it is true, found fairly adequate treatment. A real history of religion is, however, still strangely absent, despite the vast literature which professes to deal with that topic, and the history of psychology is very backward. The history of science, too, presents vast gaps which are sometimes vainly treated as though they represented breaches in continuity of the phenomena rather than breaches in our knowledge, and the two works before us represent the efforts of two eminent scholars in two separate departments to establish continuity across these gaps. (1) Greek Medicine in Rome: The Fitz Patrick Lectures on the History of Medicine delivered at the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1909–10, with other Historical Essays. By Rt. Hon. Sir T. Clifford Allbutt. Pp. xiv + 633. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1921.) 30s. net. (2) Arabian Medicine: Being the Fitz Patrick Lectures delivered at the College of Physicians in November 1919 and November 1920. By Prof. Edward G. Browne. Pp. viii + 138. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1921.) 12s. net.