By W.F. Bynum, Anne Hardy, Stephen Jacyna, Christopher Lawrence, and E.M. Tansey. 614 pp., illustrated. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2006. $90 (cloth); $29.99 (paper). ISBN 978-0-521-47524-2 (cloth); 978-0-521-47565-5 (paper).
For reasons not entirely clear, medical historians writing inthe first half of the 20th century seemed driven to write sweepinghistories, describing developments from antiquity to their owntime. The fact-filled tomes of Fielding Garrison (1913), WilliamOsler (1921), Charles Singer (1928), Victor Robinson (1931),Arturo Castiglione (1936), Richard Shryock (1936), Kenneth Walker(1953), and Erwin H. Ackerknecht (1955) continue to sit on ourshelves, but few of them are read, or even recommended, today.The past 45 years or so, by contrast, could be called the ageof the monograph, launched symbolically by the appearance ofCharles Rosenberg's . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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