A History of Geology and Medicine by Christopher J. Duffin, Richard T.J. Moody, and Christopher Gardner-Thorpe, eds

Abstract

78 BOOK REVIEWS Christopher J. Duffin, Richard T.J. Moody, and Christopher GardnerThorpe , eds, A History of Geology and Medicine, Special Publication # 375 (London: The Geological Society, 2013). ISBN 978-1-86239356 -1 (HC). Illustrations, vi + 490 pp. There are numerous historical links between geology and medicine. These linkages have given rise to the modern science of medical geology, which deals with relationships between geological factors and health. Today, there are various textbooks on the subject, reflecting the wide interest in this area but A History of Geology and Medicine represents the first book to describe the history of this field. Three senior editors have championed the present work. Christopher J. Duffin from The Natural History Museum in London has teamed up with Richard T.J. Moody from Kingston University in London and world-renowned medical historian Christopher Gardner-Thorpe at the University of Exeter Medical School to bring to fruition a quite remarkable historical compendium of individual historical papers on the subject. A History of Geology and Medicine is presented as a large hardback publication. The front cover features a drawing of geopharmaceuticals used by William Heberden (1710–1801), an English physician, to illustrate his annual course of lectures at Cambridge on materia medica in the second half of the eighteenth century. The chapters of the book are many, varied, and colourful, ranging from ‘Lithotherapeutical Research Sources from Antiquity to the Mid-Eighteenth Century’ to ‘Dr Arthur Conan Doyle’s Contribution to the Popularity of Pterodactyls’. The colourful names of the chapters indicate the diversity and authenticity of the subject matter covered. The first chapter is basically an introduction to the chapters presented in this work, which are very much individuallyresearched works, largely from medical historians, but also from geoscientists. Each chapter is well-referenced, and once you get past the myriad challenging words with geological overtones, each chapter draws you into the particular world that is painted by each of the chapter contributors. The second chapter, for example on lithotherapeutical research, describes a number of medical treatments which have their origin in rocks and minerals or from the earth more broadly. The use of pumice stone, especially in treating gum disease (p. 12) and wound healing (p. 27) is not that far removed from modern medicine. Although many of these treatments have largely disappeared, some, such as the Health & History ● 17/2 ● 2015 79 use of baked clays for treatment (p. 69–70) in Chapter 4, continue to be used to the present day in human and veterinary medicine. Kaolin, for example, is a type of clay rich in the clay mineral kaolinite, which when made in the laboratory is still widely used for treating diarrhoea and dysentery. Found amongst the middle pages of A History of Geology and Medicine are a number of most interesting chapters. For example, the chapter on the ‘Sunday Stone: An Enduring Metaphor of Mining Diseases and Underground Mining Conditions’ immediately sparked my occupational health interest. This is an easy reading chapter written with the modern context in mind by two of the book’s most senior medical historians, John Pearn and Christopher GardnerThorpe , also one of the book’s editors. Sunday stones are basically calcareous deposits often taken from pipes that drain water from collieries, and the carbonate of lime deposits often had a striped appearance. The dark layers came from more active mining periods, where the coal dust blacked the water, and lighter layers formed during periods when the mines were not active and the water was cleaner. It exemplified what miners were exposed to in these mines and we are well-aware of myriad mining diseases that have afflicted workers through the centuries. As a reader with a public health background I was also drawn to the sixteenth chapter—‘The Influence of Geology in the Development of Public Health’. While some advances in geology and public health are more obvious, such as the recent understanding of trace element deficiency diseases (p. 279) (for example, goitre), others, such as environmental contamination of air and ground water, took centuries to understand by many of the well-known pioneers of public health, including John Snow, among others. Hippocrates’ (circa 400 BC) observations concerning...