Medical Men Research Articles

The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine (review)

Reviewed by: The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine Frank Heynick The Healthy Jew: The Symbiosis of Judaism and Modern Medicine, by Mitchell B. Hart. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 264 pp. $29.00. We're all familiar nowadays with health foods and wellness practices of exotic (usually Indian and Far Eastern) cultures which gain some fad status in the Western World. Well, it seems that a century or so ago kosher food was on the verge of becoming the macrobiotic cuisine among Christians in Europe and America. It didn't quite catch on. But the Jewish practice of circumcision did, at least in much of the U.S. [End Page 203] Also a century or so ago many gentile physicians and academics attributed the wildly disproportionate number of intellectuals and geniuses among the modern Jews to millennia-old Jewish eugenic practices (subtle and humane) which encouraged the procreation of the best and the brightest as well as "racial" exclusivity. Quite a few gentile medical men of the time deemed this worthy of emulation among their own populations. But eventually a totally perverted version of eugenics would arise to wreak horrific consequences on the Jews themselves, who came to be viewed as mortal parasitic genetic rivals of the "Aryans." These are some of the topics dealt with in this book by Mitchell B. Hart, associate professor of history at the University of Florida. The period under discussion, roughly the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, was a time of breathtakingly rapid advances in medicine and biology, especially with the triumph of the germ theory of communicable disease, the rise of Darwinian evolutionary theory and genetics, the development of microbiological models of immunity, and the application of scientifically based public health measures. However, religion (Christianity and Judaism), although on the wane in much of the Western World, remained a potent force. It was also an era of industrialization and rapid urbanization—bringing in its wake epidemics of tuberculosis, cholera, syphilis, typhus and more to the city dwellers. Yet the Jewish population seemed to suffer proportionately far less from these scourges than did their neighbors. The era was furthermore a time of Jewish emancipation in much of Europe. The explosive achievements of Jews in the sciences (especially medicine), the arts, literature, philosophy, technology, and the industrialization process were utterly out of proportion to their tiny population. Contemporary medical scientists and clergymen in Continental Europe (notably Germany and France), Britain, and the United States were asking: Where were the reasons for such particularities of modern Jews to be found? In their age-old religious (Mosaic and Talmudic) practices? Their cultural traditions? Their long history as town-dwellers and persecuted minority? In his study of contemporary opinions on these issues, Prof. Hart mines a particular kind of primary source material, namely academic journals and books, professional magazines, and even popular magazines and newspapers of the era. The physicians, scientists, and clergy who authored these texts were sometimes Jews, but often (and most interestingly) gentiles. Thus we read how quite a few Christian clergymen, seeing as truly divine the Mosaic health-related practices (anti-contagion measures, dietary prohibitions, circumcision, and marriage and sexual rules), came to bemoan their having been discarded by Christianity. Less religious gentile medical men, although [End Page 204] more inclined to see Moses and his colleagues as incredibly advanced scientific thinkers, were no less regretful of the loss of Torah health practices to Christians, and all the more so in view of how the Diaspora rabbis had further developed such practices into the intricate halakha and kashrut system. The Healthy Jew is a valuable contribution to the field of Jewish medical and cultural studies. But stylistically the book suffers from a certain repetitiveness and redundancy. This obstacle to general readers may be somewhat trying even for academics. Of course, any paring and tightening of the text would have reduced the book's already modest length. On the other hand, however, there are several topics which Prof. Hart treats either not at all or at most in a passing sentence, which, I believe, would have deserved consideration in the historical context. With virtually no exception, all the authors...

Bengt Jangfeldt, Axel Munthe: the road to San Michele, translated by Harry Watson, London and New York, I B Tauris, 2008, pp. ix, 383, illus., £25.00 (hardback 978-1-84511-720-7).

Dr Axel Munthe (1857–1949) is best known as the author of The story of San Michele (London, John Murray, 1929), a book translated into some forty languages, which has fascinated readers across the world. In a semi-fictional autobiography the elderly Munthe presented himself as an old hermit, retired from medical practice to a mystical retreat on the isle of Capri. The adventures and sentiments of the hero in The story of San Michele were a construction of an alternative life, that of an ideal physician, ever available to his patients, never charging for his services, modelling his life on St Francis, and a benevolent protector of animals. This book and probably also Munthe’s earlier Letters from a mourning city (London, John Murray, 1887, 1899) about volunteer work during a cholera epidemic in Naples inspired many men and women to good deeds in medical service. Munthe did not publish in medical journals. His early fiction, however, provides some interesting glimpses into the practice of medicine a century ago. Bengt Jangfeldt’s biography Axel Munthe: the road to San Michele is a valuable contribution to the publications in English about the medical man Axel Munthe, who developed into a literary personality. Drawing on a treasure trove of Munthe’s preserved private correspondence and other sources, Jangfeldt has meticulously traced his life’s journey and professional career. The younger son of an apothecary in Sweden, Munthe’s brief medical education in Montpellier and Paris prepared him for work as an obstetrician, but he fashioned himself as a nerve doctor, claiming that he had trained under Jean-Martin Charcot at La Salpetriere. His attempts to build a medical practice in Paris in the 1880s failed, but he was assisted to set up practice at Piazza di Spagna in Rome and became a sought-after physician among English, American and Scandinavian expatriates in the 1890s. Munthe retired, a wealthy man, to the isle of Capri, where he would have his main residence for forty years. On Capri he had already built the Villa San Michele, presently a popular tourist attraction. In the private realm, Munthe experienced two failed marriages. With his English second wife Hilda, nee Pennington Mellor, Munthe had two sons. For thirty years he maintained a close relationship with Queen Victoria of Sweden, a relationship lasting until her death in 1930. Munthe left Capri in 1943 and spent the remaining years of his life in an apartment at the Royal Palace in Stockholm. Jangfeldt’s main focus is on the Anglophile, cosmopolitan Munthe’s personal life and the social milieux in which he moved. Jangfeldt’s fascination with Munthe’s ascent into high society—diplomatic circles, nobility, and the network of royal families in Europe a hundred years ago—and Munthe’s stance in the two world wars conveys empathy and thrill. Sweden does not have a great biographical tradition on a par with France or Britain. Jangfeldt’s work in this genre is therefore a first. Lytton Strachey pointed out in his preface to Eminent Victorians that a biographer has two duties: to preserve, and to lay bare, to expose. Jangfeldt excels in the first task, but he is not a critical historian who cynically examines his findings to uncover a truth less seductive to a romantic imagination than the first, fresh impressions. Nevertheless, a reader interested to learn about the life of a high society physician a hundred years ago will be well entertained by Jangfeldt’s rendition of Axel Munthe’s story.

On Not Writing Biography

The archives of Frances Hamilton (1742-1802) of Bishops Lydeard near Taunton, Somerset, were a gift to a historian wanting to remake the English working class by entering domestic servants--as workers--into historical accounts of England's transition to capitalist modernity. (1) She was born Frances Coles, the daughter of a local attorney. After a brief marriage to Thomas Hamilton, a Bath medical man ('My dear Mr Hamilton [died] 7th June 1779 ... Married 5 Years & five Weeks ...' she brooded in her diary) she returned to the small family estate at Bishops Lydeard, which she farmed up until her death. She kept painstaking household and farm accounts and records of her reading, over twenty volumes and twenty-two years. She employed a labour force in her house and on her farm; she thought about labour, in the abstract, and practically, in order to manage and pay it. And every farthing that left her purse had its passage recorded. Once, in 1796, she could not recall exactly how much she had paid her washerwoman at 6d a day ('Catherine paid her abt 2s'), but that was one tiny faltering in twenty years of reckoning up her profits and losses. (2) Anyway, she often lent Catherine money, and their meetings to settle accounts always involved complicated calculations on both sides. On this occasion Hamilton remembered that she had lent her 2s after a previous wash, as well as paying her. These were highly useful accounts, and they have been called meticulous. (3) She moved with evident ease between old prescription books of her husband containing builders' bills and indoor servants' wages, and an old volume of inventories where she recorded payment to her casual workers. Borrowings from the local Book Society were listed next to her washerwomen's accounts. When she kept a diary--what she called a 'Day Book'--it was in an old ledger of lawyer's bills, probably her father's. (4) She used all these volumes regularly, to transfer records from her daybook to her housekeeping or farm accounts, and quarterly, to compile a statement of farm outgoings and income. She owned less than a hundred acres and was perhaps unusual in keeping such detailed records; it is said that the practice was more likely among men and women with larger holdings than hers. (5) The model of writing and recording at work in Hamilton's volumes was modern and secular. She did not use her notebooks and ledgers as an aid to worship in the way that Michael Mascuch has described for other eighteenth-century diary-writers. (6) Hamilton sat through many a sermon at Bishops Lydeard, but made notes on not one of them. Each birthday she inscribed a prayer asking that she might be granted an increase in goodness over the coming year, but she did not write in daily conversation with God, as did some of her contemporaries. (7) She only rarely copied out aphorisms or extended passages from her reading; rather, when she made a comment it was brief and succinct--an expression of her opinion on the matter. Compared with some of her contemporaries, her relationship with the texts that furnished her religious and political imagination was one of some independence. She was a woman--and a reader--who not only knew her own mind but also how it had been cultivated. Her brief assessment of Dugald Stewart's Philosophy ('a Book I have a high opinion of ') was initialled. (8) This indicates a sense of an audience for her writing, even if the audience was just herself. But writing '1 pound Mackaroons', '1 pound of Sausages', 'Oisters 1/2 C', 'Worsted for my Apprentices', 'Straw', '[paid] Spiller Haberdasher in full', '[paid] Dinham shoemaker in full', was not done for an imagined audience in the same way. It was done so that she knew how much money she had spent, and though she might read these entries again (and again) she had not the intention of communicating something by them. By way of contrast with the journal-keeping of another gentleman's daughter of the same period, the Lancastrian Elizabeth Shackleton, Hamilton's focus was on production rather than consumption, on the men and women, their labour and their wages for labour, that allowed her to wrest a living from her own acres. …

Doctoring geology: the medical origins of the Geological Society

Abstract Four of the Geological Society's 13 founders were medical men: William Babington, James Parkinson, James Franck and James Laird, the Society's first Secretary. All were physicians and mineralogists except Parkinson, an apothecary surgeon and fossilist. At least 20 percent of the Society's early members were also medical practitioners whose prime interest was mineralogy. The subject was taught as part of medical training, required as it was in the fabrication of medicines, thus medical men were drawn into mineralogy and on into geology. In 1805 a number of medical practitioners broke away from the constraints of their parent body, the Medical Society of London, to form the Medical and Chirurgical Society, which became a role model for the young Geological Society when challenged by its parent body, the Royal Society. Driven by wealthy mineral collectors and patrons of science like Charles Greville, one reason – perhaps the reason – for founding the Society was to map the mineralogical history of Britain. Towards this endeavour, Babington's expertise in mineralogy brought people together, Laird organized them and Parkinson was invited because he was not a mineralogist. Franck was unable to participate significantly, being away at war for much of the time. The contribution made to the founding of the Geological Society by each of the medical founders is examined, and a biographical sketch of each man reveals the close relationship between medicine and the emergence of this new science of geology.

The 1815 Act to Regulate Madhouses in Scotland: A Reinterpretation

The 1815 Act to Regulate Madhouses in Scotland: A Reinterpretation

C Helen Brock (ed.), The correspondence of Dr William Hunter, 1740–1783, 2 vols, London, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, vol. 1: pp. xli, 371; vol. 2: pp. 485, £225.00, $395.00 (hardback 978-1-85196-904-30).

C Helen Brock (ed.), The correspondence of Dr William Hunter, 1740–1783, 2 vols, London, Pickering & Chatto, 2007, vol. 1: pp. xli, 371; vol. 2: pp. 485, £225.00, $395.00 (hardback 978-1-85196-904-30). - Volume 53 Issue 1

The Politics of Professionalization: MPs, Medical Men, and the 1858 Medical Act

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The Anatomy Inspector and the Government Corpse

The nineteenth-century laws under which Australian medical schools obtained bodies for their students to dissect were deliberately vague on certain matters. Significantly, they failed to define the meaning of the term ‘anatomical examination’, the practice that they were regulating. Was this confined to dissecting a corpse for medical training, or did it bring within the realm of law the multitude of activities that medical men undertook on the dead? This article analyses an important 1903 South Australian government inquiry in which the meaning of this contentious term assumed centre stage, during a scandal that revealed exactly what was being done to the bodies of people whose deaths had been the subject of coronial enquiries, or who had died in Adelaide’s asylums and its hospital. This article has been peer-reviewed.

Music and medicine

The co-existence of medicine and music is hardly new; the interplay between the two disciplines becomes ever closer as performing arts medicine is, increasingly, recognised as a medical specialty with...

John Keats's Attitude to Lawyers

In one of his journal-letters to his brother George and sister-in-law Georgiana, John Keats expressed his disapproval of lawyers. The paper considers the cause of and justification for that disapproval, as well as other incidental matters, such as Keats's thoughts of becoming a physician in the then-divided medical profession and his attitude both to the clergy and to the American physical and cultural environment.The paper includes: an image of a plaster cast taken from a life mask of Keats; and copies of seven contemporary satirical prints, one political in nature, the others depicting medical, clerical and legal men. It also includes copies of three contemporary topographical prints, one of Apothecaries Hall, one of the Bank of England and one of Girdlers' Hall.

Editorial, The Practice of Radiology, Ethical Considerations

Editorial, The Practice of Radiology, Ethical Considerations

Midwifery in New Zealand 1904–1971

Childbirth for European women in early twentieth century New Zealand was family centred. The majority of births took place in the home, accepted as a difficult but natural part of a woman's role in life. Midwives were mostly married women who worked autonomously and had usually borne children themselves. By the 1970s this picture had dramatically changed. Virtually all births took place in hospital and were under the control of medical men and women. When legislation was passed (the Nurses Act 1971) that removed the right of New Zealand midwives to practice autonomously, New Zealand midwifery had largely been subsumed by nursing, controlled by medicine and displaced from a community based profession into a hospital based workforce. This article examines how the trends of medicalisation, hospitalisation, and nursification changed the New Zealand maternity services from 1900 to 1971, outlining the effect those changes had on the midwifery profession. The changes described here were also common to other western societies; examining how they occurred provides a context for understanding the history of midwifery in New Zealand.

Epidemic Smallpox in India

September/October 2008 · Historically Speaking 31 away; one buttock virtually withered away. The pain in his left shoulder was so great that he could not raise his arm, and both shoulders were withered. There was a constant voiding sore below his ribs on the right side, and a constant stream from the top of his head, running down his back. If you touched the place where this filthy stream began, it felt as though the skull was fractured. Von Hurten recovered because (he believed) he used the new cure of guaiacum wood. Von Hütten started his treatise with the words, "It hath pleased almighty God," Visum Deo est, "that in our time sicknesses should arise which were unknown to our forefathers." This view was shared by medical men. The court physician in Ferrara, Corradino Gilino, wrote in 1499, "We also see that the Supreme Creator, now full of wrath with us for our terrible sins, punishes us with this cruellest of ills which has now spread not only through Italy but across almost the whole of Christendom. Everywhere is the sound of trumpets; everywhere the noise of arms is heard .... Let us say, with the Prophet in the sixth psalm, 'Lord, do not censure me in your anger nor in your wrath afflict us.' This I believe is the cause of this savage plague." Some theologians claimed the sin in question being duly punished by God was luxuria: "seeing that the guilty organ [i.e., the penis] is the organ which suffers, the theologians admire that just and equitable maxim, for a like sin a like penance." The decade of the 1490s was most unfortunate in that it witnessed the appearance of not one but two pandemics: pox and typhus. The latter arose primarily from the new modes of warfare, particularly the widespread use of siege tactics, which pinned down both the besieger and the besieged in frightful conditions. Moreover, "plague" (or diseases that contemporaries called plague) continued to appear every few years, regularly killing its thousands. All these epidemics and pandemics had significant economic—and sometimes political—effects, and these disruptions of society encouraged the view that people were living in the Last Days. * * * Some 350 years later a cholera pandemic struck Europe . This 19th-century pandemic had a significant influence on die thinking of Justus Hecker (17951850 ), a third generation professor of medicine— and soon of the history of medicine—at Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin. When cholera arrived in Europe in 1831, Hecker focused his attention on major epidemics in history. He read medieval and early modern chronicles, rediscovered the great plague of 1348-49 (which had been forgotten ), and named it the "Black Death." He further learned of a dancing mania of the Middle Ages, and the strange disease of the "English sweat" that had broken out in the 16th century and only seems to have affected Englishmen whether at home or abroad. Subsequendy, Hecker worked on die Antonine plague of the 2nd century A.D. On each of these past epidemics Hecker wrote a short book in the early 1830s, which was quickly translated into other languages. Almost single-handedly Hecker had recovered these momentous events of disease history, and he has thus appropriately been styled the originator of historical pathology. But Hecker also saw these epidemics as momentous in the development of human history. For Hecker's interpretation of these epidemics was peculiar. He regarded them as cosmic in origin, and caused by Providence (though not sent as divine punishments ). He saw them as occurring in vast cycles, and their effect was to "renovate" nature. He believed that the story of epidemics, if it could be told, would be allied to the history of the mental development of the human race! In other words, the reaction of human society to disasters such as epidemics could over time improve the moral condition of mankind. So, although Hecker was certainly dealing in terms of historical pathology, it was not in a form that would today be recognized as scientific. The development of laboratory medicine later in the 19th century led to the perception that epidemics are purely natural phenomena, subjects of science rather than eschatology...

Sabine Dumschat, Ausländische Mediziner im Moskauer Rußland, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa, Band 67, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner 2006, pp. 750, €88.00 (hardback 3-515-08512-2; 978-3-515-08512-0).

Sabine Dumschat, Ausländische Mediziner im Moskauer Rußland, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des östlichen Europa, Band 67, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner 2006, pp. 750, €88.00 (hardback 3-515-08512-2; 978-3-515-08512-0). - Volume 52 Issue 3

Newes from the Dead (review)

Reviewed by: Newes from the Dead Elizabeth Bush Hooper, Mary; Newes from the Dead;. Roaring Brook, 2008; [256p] ISBN 978-1-59643-355-7 $15.95 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 9-12 This fictionalized account of a ripped-from-the-headlines event (the headlines of 1650, that is) opens with servant girl Anne Green slipping back into a state of consciousness following her hanging for the crime of infanticide. With her body still immobilized from the trauma, Anne tries to make sense of her present condition and, uncertain whether she's dead or alive, she passes the time by reviewing the sad chain of events that brought her to the gallows. Seduced by her employer's grandson, she delivered a premature, stillborn baby; in an effort to keep the family name unsullied and the grandson's propitious engagement on track, Sir Thomas Reade used his influence to have Anne charged with infanticide and hanged. While a seemingly dead Anne muses on this injustice, a team of scholars and physicians prepares to dissect her body, which they have purchased from the family at the time of the execution. A flicker of eye movement, a faint rale, and an uncertain pulse halt the proceedings, and as the attendant Sir Thomas bellows to carry on with the dissection, the medical men pool their strategies for reviving Anne, demonstrating how God's justice has been manifest through this miracle—and securing their own professional laurels into the bargain. Anne's comatose chronicle isn't the most convincing narrative vehicle, and Hooper's detailing of Anne's sexual encounters and the melodramatic build-up to the dissection-that-almost-was propel readers into role of prurient voyeur that she seems to criticize in Anne's contemporaries. Still, the based-on-fact story is undeniably compelling, and teens needn't wait until Halloween for a brush with the macabre. Copyright © 2008 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Marguerite Hirt Raj, Médecins et malades de l’Égypte romaine. Étude socio-légale de la profession médicale et de ses praticiens du Ier au IVe siècle ap. J.-C., Studies in Ancient Medicine, vol. 32, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2006, pp. xx, 386, €139.00, $181.00 (hardback 978-90-04-14846-8).

This thirty-second volume in the series Studies in Ancient Medicine (Brill) presents the revised and updated version of a PhD thesis defended at the University of Geneva in 1996 by Marguerite Hirt Raj. A classicist, Raj's objective in this book is to propound “une etude approfondie de la position sociale et du statut des medecins et de leur profession en Egypte romaine” (p. 5). The study is divided into six chapters: the introduction and the conclusion aside, chapters 2 to 4 encompass the definition of the physician's profession (training, specialization and particular cases, and remuneration), the fields of medical activities (public sector, army, private sector), and the physician's social and legal status. Chapter 5, entitled ‘De l’etiologie a la therapie: le choix offert au malade’, proposes a general reflection on the kinds of medicine practised in Antiquity. The subject of this work is very promising, for it considers ancient medicine as a social practice, with the intention of improving our knowledge not of medical theories and therapeutics, but of the social and legal status of doctors and their art in Antiquity. However, Raj does not fully attain her objective, because of an incomplete understanding of medical history. In fact, she does not seem to have had any specific training in the history of medicine, and thus makes some mistakes in the interpretation of evidence. On several occasions, Raj's remarks betray her misreading of Greek and Latin medical literature, notably the Hippocratic Corpus. For example, concerning the medical knowledge of Philo of Alexandria, Raj points out that he had studied the Hippocratic authors, in particular “Hippocrate, dont il cite par deux fois le debut des Aphorismes … ainsi qu'un long passage tire du traite des Semaines” (p. 70). The wording here implies that these two treatises, the Aphorisms and the Weeks, are still attributed to Hippocrates today, a view at variance with modern Hippocratic studies. The author's lack of familiarity with the medical evidence also appears in the choice of editions. For instance, Raj quotes (p. 245) a long extract from the Hippocratic treatise Sacred disease in the French translation of Emile Littre, published in 1849, without taking into account the more recent editions, particularly the translation and commentary of Jacques Jouanna (2003). Some inaccuracies also appear in the pages on the archiatroi. With regard to the oldest mention of the term, Raj cites the inscription discovered at Iulia Gordos (Lydia), in honour of Apollophanes of Seleuceia, doctor of Antiochos III. She, of course, states that on the damaged original the word archiatros was restored, but she still seems to believe this to be the correct word, only indicating in a footnote that Louis Robert rejected this “restoration”. Today, it is admitted, after new reading of the stone, that the word archiatros was never inscribed on the chiselled area (P Herrmann, ‘Ehrendekret von Iulia Gordos’, in AAWW, 1974, 111, p. 439, n. 2; E Samama, Les medecins dans le monde grec, Geneve, 2003, p. 355, n.50). Furthermore, Raj asserts that the title of archiatros seems not to have been given to the doctors of the Ptolemaic kings, nor to the imperial doctors in Rome (pp. 55–6). Yet, in the following lines, she rightly mentions some instances of the title being used during the reigns of Claudius (C. Stert. Xenophon) and Nero (Andromachos). Moreover, other examples of archiatroi, imperial doctors in Rome, appear in ancient evidence (T. Stat. Crito under Trajan, Marcios Hermogenes under Hadrian, Stat. Attalos under Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, L. Gellios Maximos under Caracalla). The word archiatros did not always designate the imperial doctor in Rome, but it could be employed with this meaning. In addition, Raj sometimes bases her argument on evidence which is not chronologically relevant to her subject. For instance, among the types of medical men, she refers to the pepaideumenos or the cultured man (pp. 67–70), a word borrowed from Aristotle. She quotes some examples of this enlightened medical amateur throughout Antiquity, from Plato to Apuleius, including Philo of Alexandria in Roman Egypt. But she is unable to identify any in the papyrological evidence, because they do not practise medicine as such. However, this kind of pepaideumenos, defined by Aristotle, is the result of theoretical considerations, which cannot be transposed to the reality of medical practice under the Empire. It is one of the misuses of evidence which detracts from the quality of this work.

Human Services Restraint: Its Past and Future

Restraints and seclusion are used on people in institutions, children in schools, nursing home residents, general hospital patients, and other locations, but most often with people who have disabilities. Questions regarding legality, morality, and efficacy abound. These questions, compounded by the serious possible adverse consequences of restraints and seclusion, have commanded wide-ranging attention from legislatures, government agencies, human service professionals, direct care staff, advocates, clients and families, and the public. This article addresses the use of physical restraints and seclusion. It does not address the use of drugs as a behavior restraint, although much of the discussion applies in that context as well. Is the use of human services restraint therapeutic? Can restraint use be reduced or replaced with alternatives? Is it time to relinquish these practices, at least when incorporated in a treatment or habilitation plan? In this article I begin with a look at the early institutional use of restraints and seclusion and, as a reminder of what may ultimately be at stake, I note some worst-case results in the United States. I then consider efficacy and risks of ‘‘human services restraint.’’ I review efforts to reform and reduce the use of restraint and address legal liability questions that impact on agency policy and professional behavior. I conclude with some thoughts on the current state of knowledge, policies, and practices regarding human services restraint and on the future of these techniques.

Leonard Smith, Lunatic hospitals in Georgian England, 1750–1830, Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine, New York and London, Routledge, 2007, pp. xvi, 288, illus., £70.00, $120.00 (hardback 978-0-415-37516-0).

Leonard Smith, Lunatic hospitals in Georgian England, 1750–1830, Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine, New York and London, Routledge, 2007, pp. xvi, 288, illus., £70.00, $120.00 (hardback 978-0-415-37516-0). - Volume 52 Issue 2

Dictionary of Medical Quotations: With Biographies of Authors

This latest addition to the field of medical quotations is a nicely illustrated monograph; its unique contributions are the inclusion of author biographies, as well as illustrations of some of the authors. It also contains a substantial bibliography. According to the author's preface, the Dictionary is aimed at “medical practitioners and family physicians… not… at medical historians” (ix) and is meant to acquaint contemporary physicians with “the most brilliant and talented minds of medical men” (ix). It is arranged in alphabetical order by broad subject headings (such as “Disease,” “Medical Life,” or “Physician”), much in the way of other medical quotation dictionaries. Generally speaking, any quote within a broad subject section includes that particular word within the quote. However, quotes are not repeated within the dictionary. For example, Logan Clendening's quote: “Surgery does the ideal thing – it separates the patient from his disease. It puts the patient back to bed and the disease in a bottle” (53), is listed ONLY under the category “Disease in a Bottle” (where it is the only quotation listed), NOT under the subject “Surgery.” In other quotation dictionaries, this has not been a problem; just flip to the keyword index, and look up the word you remember. However, here it is a major issue, as the Dictionary does not contain an index, making it difficult to locate a quotation based on partially remembered phrases (which in this reviewer's experience is the primary reason for the use of a quotation dictionary).

“Not One Single Case of Throat Irritation”: Misuse of the Image of the Otolaryngologist in Cigarette Advertising

Early in the last century, when questions about the health effects of smoking became a topic of widespread discussion, tobacco companies undertook a multi-faceted campaign to allay the public's fears. As terms like "smoker's cough" and "coffin nails" (referring to cigarettes) began to appear in the popular vernacular, tobacco marketers recognized the need to counter this threat to their livelihood. One strategy was to use endorsements by healthy and vigorous-appearing singers, radio stars, and actors. Another was to raise fears over weight gain: "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet." Among the more reprehensible tactics was the utilization of the image of the noble and caring physician to sell cigarettes: doctors were depicted both as satisfied and enthusiastic partakers of the smoking habit (e.g., "More doctors smoke Camels"). Images of medical men (and a few token women) appeared under warm reassurances of the safety of smoking. Frequently, images appeared of a head-mirrored "throat doctor," smiling benignly, while indicating that the company's product would do no harm. Indeed, many cigarette ads, especially for menthol brands, suggested a therapeutic soothing benefit from smoking. Liberal use was also made of pseudo-scientific medical reports and surveys. Our intention is to tell, principally through advertising images-the story of how, between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, tobacco companies used deceptive and often patently false claims in an effort to reassure the public of the safety of their products.