Surgeon, Scientist, Soldier: The Life and Times of Henry Wade 1876-1955 by Dugald Gardner

Abstract

164 BOOKREVIEWS between these people and the various agencies that intersected over their institutionalisation, are all examined in this work. Despite the foreword by Bernard Harris proclaiming this work as a milestone in its particular series, this book is one of the final titles in the Routledge series Studies in the Social History of Medicine, a publishing wing of the Society for the Social History of Medicine in the United Kingdom since 1989. The successful series has been taken up by anotherpublisher in the UK; readers should hope thatthis has a long and productive association with the SSHM. CATHARINE COLEBORNE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO DugaldGardner, Surgeon,Scientist,Soldier: TheLife and Timesof Henry Wade1876-1955 (London:Royal Society of MedicinePress, 2005) ISBN1-85315-661-2.xvii + 437 pp. I began reading this biography with considerable anticipation, an appetite whetted by the clear print and lavish illustrations, and by the promise in the foreword that Wade had enjoyed five lives: as a 'scientist and pathological expert in the biology of cancer, a master of the complex and exacting field of surgical urology, a military surgeon in the traditionof Dominique Larrey, a museum conservator of distinction and an antiquarian.' Wade, described by the authoras an 'archetypal surgeon ... at a time of transition in the world of medicine,' was the son of a United Presbyterian Church minister. Wade and his siblings displayed many of the characteristics of the nineteenth century Scottish eagerness to better themselves by education and / or travel. Two of his brothersbecame lawyers and anotherpursued a medical career in Australia; a sister also went to Australia and married a doctor, spawning two more medical men along the way. Henry commenced his medical studies at the Edinburgh Medical School in 1893 and graduatedfive years later. Within eighteen months of graduating he had accepted a post as a civilian surgeon with the British Army during the Anglo-Boer War,and chapter two recounts the field conditions and medical problems facing the doctors involved in this Health& History • 10/1 • 2008 165 conflict. Two later chapters cover Wade's time with the Royal Army Medical Corps at Gallipoli and in Egypt and Syria during World War 1. Four chapters deal with the intervening years from 1902-14 and examine the beginnings of his surgical career,involvement with cancer research and laboratoryscience in Edinburgh, and his time as curator of the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The second half of the text pursues Wade's post-war career as a surgeon, his role as a university teacher and examiner, and his bureaucratic contribution as a College councillor and president (1935-37). One of the artsof the biographeris to engage with his or her subject and flesh out the bare bones of a career. Sadly, Dugald Gardner fails to achieve this. There is little sense of Wade the man;theclosest we come to this is the penultimate chapterwhich describes his marriagelate in life and the early death of his wife before turning to an account of Wade's antiquarian interests around the history of his house near Haddington- something entirely peripheral to his surgical career. Almost all of the chapters within the book focus more on the institutions to which Wade was attached than on his contributions to medicine and surgery. The text is littered with irrelevant information, much of pertaining to periods beyond the span of Wade's life. Why, for example, are we informed of the number of coal fires and gas mantles in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburghin the 1870s and the electric lamps which replaced then in the 1890s (pp. 10-1, 43-4)? Again, why tell the reader how many ships docked in Leith in 1844 in the section covering Wade's appointment to Leith Hospital in 1908? This self-indulgence extends throughout the text and is coupled with an often muddled chronology. The section on postgraduate examinations, for example, jumps successively to 1931, 1921, 1954, 1902, 1918, 1900, 1938 and 1943, with no indication as to whether Wadewas involved in any of the events listed. The author has been poorly advised by his publishers, or has chosen to ignore their advice. The text is indiscriminately littered with both endnotes...