Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Library Collection - History of Medicine

The greatest postnatal killer of the nineteenth century was puerperal fever. A vicious and usually fatal form of septicaemia, puerperal or childbed fever was known to occur in maternity hospitals far more frequently than at home births, and to spread faster in crowded wards than in those with fewer patients. Its cause was unknown. In this precise statistical analysis of the facts, gathered from several sources across the major cities of Europe, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) explores the mystery of puerperal fever and its possible causes. She stresses the necessity of good ventilation in hospitals, condemning those with overcrowded wards, and cites instances where the layout of wards has a noticeable correlation with the number of deaths. Published in 1871, just before Pasteur's work on germ theory proved that the problem could be all but eradicated if doctors washed their hands more rigorously, this work remains clear, scholarly and engaging.

Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes (1854-1919) was a pioneer of nursing training and friend of Florence Nightingale. In 1880, aged only twenty-six, she became Matron of the London Hospital, the largest hospital in England, a post she held until her death. During her time there she improved working conditions for the nurses and trained her own staff, recognising the importance of a knowledge of anatomy and physiology, but never losing sight of the primary duty of a nurse to care for a patient's needs. She opposed proposals for the registration of nurses as she believed it would endorse lower standards of training than those she espoused. Her popular textbook for ward sisters was first published in 1896 and provides practical advice on ward and staff management and training of probationers, emphasising the importance of the sister as role model and mentor to her staff. This is the 1893 third edition.

A physician and medical reformer enthused by the scientific and cultural progress of the Enlightenment as it took hold in Britain, Thomas Percival (1740-1804) wrote on many topics, but he was particularly concerned about public health issues arising from the factory conditions of the Industrial Revolution. Calling for improved standards of care, he believed that the working poor should be treated the same as wealthy private clients. Following a disastrous dispute in 1792 which closed the Manchester Infirmary's Fever Hospital during an epidemic, Percival was asked to draft regulations on professional medical conduct. In 1794 he privately circulated a tract, Medical Jurisprudence, which he later revised for this 1803 publication. Based on Hippocratic and Christian principles, Percival's work is considered the first modern formulation of doctor-patient etiquette. His Essays Medical and Experimental (revised edition, 1772-3) and the four volumes of his collected works (1807) are also reissued in this series.

Bath physician Joseph Hume Spry (c.1779-1859) was concerned that the popular practice of 'taking the waters' had fallen out of favour. In 1822 he produced this treatise extolling the healing properties of Bath's waters, supported by his own case notes and the writings of other physicians. He claimed that manifold afflictions, ranging from gout to indigestion, could be eased by drinking or bathing in these mineral-rich waters. In addition to offering careful instructions for treating each ailment, Spry's book includes a chapter on Bath's history, detailed descriptions and a sketch of the Roman baths, and a summary of the authors who had previously described the baths, from Solinus in the third century to Spry's contemporaries. Opening the work with a supplicating dedication to one of Bath's wealthy patrons, Charles Herbert Pierrepont, second Earl Manvers, Spry also used the book to appeal for the much-needed restoration of the Roman baths.

Taking the view that medicine is as much the art of avoiding ill health as it is the cure of disease, physician William Buchan (1729-1805) published this home health guide in 1769. The first part is devoted to preventing ailments through proper diet and exercise, while the second part helps families diagnose and treat maladies ranging from coughs and hiccups to jaundice and gout. Buchan showed particular concern for the health of women and children, whom he believed were often misunderstood and neglected. He condemned corsets and restrictive infant swaddling, discouraged 'high living' and indolence, and blamed the high child-mortality rate on upper-class ignorance of child-rearing wisdom. His book became the most popular health guide prior to the twentieth century, with over a hundred editions by 1871. This reissue is of the first edition. Its diagnoses of physical (and cultural) ailments will illuminate eighteenth-century concerns for modern readers.

A gifted yet controversial anatomical teacher, Robert Knox (1791-1862) published this remarkable study in 1852. It explores the influence of anatomy on evolutionary theories and fine art respectively. The first part of the work discusses the lives and scientific insights of the eminent French naturalists Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844). Rejecting the explanations offered by natural theology, Knox maintains that descriptive anatomy can give answers to questions surrounding the origin and development of life in the natural world. The latter part of the book is concerned with the relation that anatomy bears to fine art, specifically the painting and sculpture of the Italian Renaissance. Entering the debate about the importance of anatomical knowledge in art, Knox focuses on 'the immortal trio' of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael. Henry Lonsdale's sympathetic biography of Knox has also been reissued in this series.

Among the ablest anatomical teachers of his day, Robert Knox (1791-1862) also busied himself with the study of zoology and ethnology. Prepared by his pupil and colleague Henry Lonsdale (1816-76), this 1870 biography explores the scope of Knox's scientific research and the nature of his character. It describes how Knox developed at Edinburgh one of the most significant anatomical schools in Britain, playing a dominant role in expanding the comparative anatomy collection held by the city's Royal College of Surgeons. Despite his eminence and popularity as a lecturer, his reputation was deeply tarnished by his association with the notorious murderers Hare and Burke, who had provided Knox with bodies for dissection. Drawing on surviving correspondence and information gathered from friends and colleagues, Lonsdale's work stands as a robust defence and sympathetic portrait of a prominent yet controversial figure in the history of nineteenth-century medicine.

Thomas Southwood Smith (1788-1861) was a minister, physician and social reformer, who considerably improved the health of the poor by linking sanitation with epidemics. A utilitarian, and friend of Jeremy Bentham, his arguments in The Use of the Dead to the Living (1827) helped lead to the Anatomy Act of 1832 which allowed corpses from workhouses to be sold to medical schools, and so ended the market for grave-robbers while improving medical education. Although the fame of his granddaughter, Octavia Hill, has eclipsed his own reputation, Southwood Smith was an important figure in his day, whose work initiated many public health reforms. He served on the royal commission on children's employment, and was medical representative on the General Board of Health to deal with the cholera epidemic of 1848. This biography, written by his granddaughter Gertrude, who was G. H. Lewes' daughter-in-law, was published in 1898.

Born in Cornwall, John Davy (1790-1868) physiologist and anatomist, and the younger brother of the distinguished chemist Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), was one of the most prolific medical experts of his day. After taking a medical degree from Edinburgh in 1814 he became an army surgeon. He later became a hospital inspector and spent time living in overseas territories including India, Sri Lanka, and Barbados. First published in 1862, Davy's book discusses the prominence of fever, dysentery, cholera, liver disease, pneumonia, and other diseases common to the army, estimating that 45% of deaths in the British army serving abroad were caused by disease rather than by conflict. Davy also records his observations on putrefaction of bodies, particularly the vital organs, emphasising the need to determine the normal condition of human organs so that abnormal, diseased organs can be easily identified.

After training to be a doctor at the London School of Medicine for Women, Flora Murray (1869-1923) became an active member of the Women's Social and Political Union. At the outbreak of the First World War, she and her fellow suffragists laid down their banners and sought to aid the Allied war effort. Working within the newly formed Women's Hospital Corps, Murray and her colleague Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873-1943) overcame initial prejudice and established two military hospitals in France in the period 1914-15. Their success prompted an invitation from the War Office to open the Endell Street Military Hospital in London, staffed entirely by women. First published in 1920, Murray's account, illustrated with numerous photographs, records important steps in furthering the acceptance of women in the medical profession. For female doctors, surgeons and nurses, the war provided not only the 'occasion for service' but also 'great professional opportunities'.

The physician and author John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), several of whose other medical and popular works have been reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection, published the first edition of this book in 1812. It was immediately successful, and went into eight further editions until 1843: this reissue is of the 1820 third edition. Many volumes on materia medica existed at the time, and Paris claims in his preface that he is not disparaging these competitor works, but that they presume too much prior knowledge on the part of the reader. His own work is designed to inform the student of the properties and effects of each medicinal substance, and how they function, both alone and in combinations. This will lead to greater understanding of the efficacy of medicines, and also help to prevent their adulteration. The qualities of each ingredient are discussed, and formulae and doses provided.

For those engaged in military conflict at the end of the nineteenth century, infection and disease were still as formidable enemies as the guns of an opposing army. Yet advances in sanitary science and understanding continued to help officers keep their troops in optimal fighting condition. After serving as an assistant surgeon for the Union Army during the American Civil War, Alfred Alexander Woodhull (1837-1921) began to publish on the topics of hygiene and sanitation, and how they related to military effectiveness. Arguably his most important publication, the present work was based on lectures he delivered at the US Infantry and Cavalry School. It covers such varied topics as the selection of men, uniform design, and the management of waste. First published in 1890, it was recommended as a textbook by the surgeon general of the time. Reissued here is the revised third edition, which appeared in 1904.

The pharmacist Jacob Bell (1810-59) spent much of his career working to raise the standards and reputation of his profession. A founder in 1841 of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, he sought to improve scientific education for practitioners as well as protect the profession through legislation. Although he served briefly in Parliament, Bell exerted his greatest influence through editing the Pharmaceutical Journal. An extended piece that he produced for the journal in 1842 forms the first part of the present work. He traces the development of pharmaceutical practice and legislation from the sixteenth century to the birth of the Pharmaceutical Society. At the behest of the society's council, Theophilus Redwood (1806-92) continued the narrative after Bell's death, concluding with the 1868 Pharmacy Act. Published in 1880, the book provides a thorough account of the gradual establishment of British pharmacy as a separate and respected profession.

The physician and author John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), several of whose other medical and popular works have been reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection, published the first edition of his Pharmacologia in 1812. It was immediately successful, and went into eight further editions until 1843. The third edition, of 1820, has been reissued in this series. This book, published in 1825, was intended as a companion volume, providing a 'grammar' of chemistry for the medical student. After an imaginary dialogue on the importance of chemistry, between a provincial physician and 'the author', to whom the former is entrusting his son for his medical education, the book moves systematically from the general application of chemistry to medicine, through topics such as gravity, crystallization and electricity, to the detail of the actions of specific elements, and tables of relevant weights and measures, providing fascinating insights into the history of medical education.

Reissued here together are two medical works, both published in 1835, by John Grant Malcolmson (1803-44), a British surgeon based in India. His extended essays explore the symptoms, diagnosis and treatment of beriberi and rheumatism, conditions which were widespread in Asia at the time. Also describing the contrasting effects that the illnesses had on India's native population and on European colonials, Malcolmson draws on his first-hand experience to speculate on the underlying causes. His analysis of beriberi, forming the larger of the two components here, discusses a disease which had perplexed doctors in the early nineteenth century. Beginning with numbness and spasms in the legs, and eventually rendering the patient completely bedridden, beriberi was frequently fatal, and physicians frequently confused it with other rheumatic disorders. It is now known to be caused by a deficiency of thiamine (vitamin B1).

Having trained in Edinburgh as a surgeon and served aboard Royal Navy vessels, Sir James Clark (1788-1870) developed a particular interest in the spread of the tuberculosis pandemic in Europe. A licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians from 1826, and elected to the Royal Society in 1832, he became a trusted physician and friend to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This early work of 1820 was based on his first-hand knowledge of the treatment of tuberculosis in southern Europe as well as the effects of climate on the disease. Among his tubercular patients in Italy around this time was the poet John Keats (who would succumb in 1821). Also reissued in this series are Clark's Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (1835), his Memoir of John Conolly (1869), and The Influence of Climate in the Prevention and Cure of Chronic Diseases (1829), a development of aspects of the present work.

Returning from the Crimea, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) used her experience of army medicine to ameliorate civilian nursing care. She was appalled by the conditions she found, affirming that the first requirement of a hospital was that 'it should do the sick no harm'. Problems such as overcrowding and damp, in addition to lack of ventilation and proper sanitation, contributed to high mortality rates. Nightingale's belief that such suffering was preventable was seen as revolutionary. In 1859 she published her two most influential works, Notes on Nursing (also reissued in this series) and Notes on Hospitals. This collection contains the two papers she presented to the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science in 1858. Also included, from 1857, is her evidence to the royal commission on the British army's sanitary conditions. Three illustrated articles on hospital design, published in The Builder in 1858, form an appendix to the work.

Published in 1829, this important work raised awareness of a poorly understood topic, running to a third edition by 1841. Sir James Clark (1788-1870) had trained as a surgeon in Edinburgh and gained experience in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. During subsequent European travels, he studied the effects of climate on disease, particularly tuberculosis, and this publication represents an expanded version of his Medical Notes on Climate, Diseases, Hospitals, and Medical Schools in France, Italy, and Switzerland (1820), which is also reissued in this series. A licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians from 1826, and elected to the Royal Society in 1832, Clark became a trusted physician and friend to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection are his Treatise on Pulmonary Consumption (1835) and Memoir of John Conolly (1869).

Having trained in Edinburgh as a surgeon and served aboard Royal Navy vessels, Sir James Clark (1788-1870) developed a particular interest in the spread of the tuberculosis pandemic in Europe. A licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians from 1826, and elected to the Royal Society in 1832, he became a trusted physician and friend to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. This influential work of 1835 focuses on the treatment and prevention of tuberculosis. Written for a general as well as medical readership, it was lauded by The Lancet and ran to several English editions along with translations into other languages. Also reissued in this series are Clark's Medical Notes on Climate, Diseases, Hospitals, and Medical Schools in France, Italy, and Switzerland (1820), The Influence of Climate in the Prevention and Cure of Chronic Diseases (1829) and his Memoir of John Conolly (1869).

Although first to suggest the possibility of light frequencies beyond the visible spectrum, the natural philosopher John Elliott (1747-87) was better known at his death for his failed suicide in front of the woman he loved. Tried for attempting to shoot her, he was acquitted but died in prison awaiting trial on the lesser charge of assault. First published in 1780, this work was his most important. Contemporary science held that vibrations of the air were directly communicated to the optic and auditory nerves and passed on to the sensorium, while Elliot proposed, through experimentation upon himself, the existence of sensory receptors, each tuned to only a limited part of the spectrum of physical frequencies. This insight led him to postulate the existence of what we now know to be ultraviolet and infrared radiation, thus paving the way for further discoveries in human sensory perception.

When this book was first published in 1832, England was caught in a cholera pandemic that had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives across Europe. It was commonly held that 'bad air' spread the disease, but theories and remedies varied: one doctor advised the Nottinghamshire public to carry silk cushions filled with myrrh and camphor to strengthen resistance to contagion, while in New York officials suspected that raw vegetables and cold water were the root of the problem. In this fiercely logical treatise, ship's doctor William Aiton cuts through even the most prevalent myths to investigate the pandemic's real causes. Throwing out the theory of bad air, he observes that cholera spreads most quickly in cities with a stagnant water supply and overseas trade. Also addressing the spread of other infectious diseases, his work provides an invaluable insight into the conflicting information available to the general public during pandemics.

A controversial psychiatrist, Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow (1844-1913) grew up around the lunatic asylums run by his father, Forbes B. Winslow, who was a specialist in the treatment of mental illness, establishing also medical grounds for the plea of insanity in criminal defence. Lyttleton spent much of his own medical career attempting to show the courts that crime and alcoholism were linked to mental illness, though he later gained notoriety for his amateur detective work: he claimed to know the identity of Jack the Ripper. Published in 1874, this book examines, often through case descriptions, the legal framework within which the mentally ill were managed, and comparisons are made with the status quo elsewhere in the world. It is an enlightening but often disturbing insight into the institutional treatment of mental illness in the late nineteenth century.

Although he was tried for attempted murder and died in Newgate Prison, the natural philosopher and apothecary John Elliot (1747-87) published a number of significant scientific works in the first part of the 1780s, especially with regard to sensory perception. This 1789 second edition of a 1781 work is essentially an alphabetically arranged catalogue of the principal British mineral waters, their properties and uses, along with those 'most celebrated ones which the English valetudinarian may have occasion to visit on the continent'. In his introduction, Elliot classes the waters according to their respective mineral properties and supplies details of the four classes of substances found united with water, and three methods for analysis. An extract of Joseph Priestley's 1772 pamphlet Directions for Impregnating Water with Fixed Air, with Dr John Nooth's alternative method as an appendix, forms an entertaining preface, informative as to the history of producing carbonated water.

In this absorbing work of medical history, the physician and writer John Aikin (1747-1822) brings together biographical information on a selection of Britain's early medics, shedding light on the lives, works and quirks of more than fifty medical writers, surgeons and physicians between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. Outlining the roles played by major figures in the great medical advances that marked this period, the book was first published in 1780, prior to Aikin's move to Great Yarmouth in 1784 to practise medicine. However, his political beliefs and dissenting views regarding the Church of England contributed to his unpopularity in the area, prompting his move to London and greater literary freedom. Over the years, he produced a broad range of published works, including his historically valuable Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester (1795), which is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.

The surgeon Thomas Pettigrew (1791-1865) was interested in all aspects of antiquity, and gained fame in London society through his mummy-unwrapping parties. (His History of Egyptian Mummies is also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.) His interest in the early history of medicine is evidenced by this work, published in 1844, which describes the various forms of superstition which the science of medicine had always attracted since ancient times. Pettigrew considers alchemy and astrology, and the use of talismans, amulets and charms, as well as the history of Egyptian, Greek and Roman medicine, and some modern developments, including 'sympathetical cures' and the rejoining of severed fingers and ears. A chapter is devoted to the belief in the efficacy of the 'royal touch' against the King's Evil (scrofula), and another to the seventeenth-century faith healer Valentine Greatrakes, of whose alleged cures Pettigrew takes a robustly sceptical view.

Eva Charlotte Ellis Luckes (1854-1919) was a pioneer of nursing training and friend of Florence Nightingale. In 1880, aged only twenty-six, she became matron of the London Hospital, the largest hospital in England, a post she held until her death. During her time there she improved working conditions for the nurses and trained her own staff, recognising the importance of a knowledge of anatomy and physiology, but never losing sight of the primary duty of a nurse to care for a patient's needs. First published in book form in 1884, these lectures were part of the training for probationers at the London Hospital. Emphasising the importance of attention to detail, the lectures address the practicalities of nursing, covering such topics as the management of infection, caring for sick children, bandaging techniques, and drug administration. Also reissued in this series is Luckes's popular 1886 textbook Hospital Sisters and their Duties.

After training as an apothecary and surgeon, Jonathan Pereira (1804-53) taught materia medica for many years. His lectures at the medical school in London's Aldersgate Street were highly successful and formed the basis for the first edition of his major encyclopaedic work on medicinal substances. A pioneering text in the field of pharmacology, Pereira's work, which he subsequently updated in further editions, provided pharmacists and medical professionals with a more rigorous scientific understanding of the drugs and remedies they prescribed. After Pereira's death, medical jurist Alfred Swaine Taylor (1806-80) and physician George Owen Rees (1813-89) prepared this revised and expanded fourth edition, interspersed with instructive woodcuts. Volume 1 (1854) includes discussion of 'physical remedies' such as heat, cold and electricity, and 'hygienic remedies' of diet, exercise and climate. It then focuses on general pharmacological practice and specific drugs, describing the medicinal properties of inorganic compounds.

A physician and medical reformer enthused by the scientific and cultural progress of the Enlightenment as it took hold in Britain, Thomas Percival (1740-1804) wrote on many topics, including public health and demography. His influential Medical Ethics (also reissued in this series) is considered the first modern formulation. This one-volume reissue brings together two volumes of his essays on a variety of medical subjects, published in a revised second edition of 1772 and a follow-up collection of 1773. Many of the essays reflect his concern for public health, particularly for the citizens of Manchester. The appendix to the first volume includes two essays that were previously unpublished. Several of the pieces record medical oddities encountered by Percival, and others document his observations on the possible medicinal applications of certain plants, including coffee. His four-volume Works (1807), containing additional essays that appeared after 1773, is also reissued in this series.

Robert Robertson (1742-1829) was a Scottish doctor and surgeon. After completing his medical apprenticeship, Robertson joined the Royal Navy as a surgeon's mate in 1760. In 1768 he was appointed surgeon to the sloop Diligence, and served as surgeon on various ships in the West Indies, North America and west Africa until 1783. He was appointed surgeon to the Royal Hospital, Greenwich in 1793. This volume, first published in 1792, contains Robertson's detailed observations of malarial and yellow fever, dysentery and other diseases which he encountered while serving as surgeon in the West Indies. Robertson describes in detail the symptoms and progression of these diseases, his treatments and the outcomes, as recorded in his monthly reviews of the ships' sick lists and many detailed case histories of his patients. This volume provides valuable information concerning the treatment of common diseases and conditions on board late eighteenth-century naval ships.