REVIEWS 179 



relation to clinical medicines, the other chapters are devoted to the setting forth 

 of the different poisons manufactured from fish, animals, plants, and inorganic 

 matter respectively. The scientist will no doubt derive from these pages the 

 "special interest'' he predicts. 



Leper Houses and Mediawal Hospitals.. Being the FitzPatrick Lectures 

 delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, London, November 5 

 and 10, 1914. By Charles A. Mercier, M.D., Fellow of the College. 

 [Pp. 47] (London : H. K. Lewis. Price is. net.) 



These two lectures are reprints from the Glasgcnv Medical Journal of February 

 191 5, and appear together as one pamphlet. The little work will appeal to a wide 

 public because the lecturer has taken the subject more from the historical than the 

 medical standpoint and has omitted everything of a technical nature. He traces 

 the growth of our modern and specialised hospitals from their early beginning four 

 centuries B.C., when their object was primarily one of hospitality, as the word 

 itself implies. He shows us how they were afterwards more used as leper houses, 

 that disease being so rife in the early ages, and when leprosy died out in Europe 

 about the sixteenth century were converted into houses for the poor and those sick 

 of various illnesses. He puts forward a new view of the mysterious disappearance 

 of that fell disease that has puzzled so many, which is that tuberculosis, as 

 prevalent in these days as leprosy was then, is but another form of the same 

 complaint. The whole subject at first sight would appear to the lay mind as 

 rather a specialised and uninteresting subject, but Dr. Mercier has contrived 

 most cleverly to give his readers quite a graphic picture of the mode of life 

 in bygone ages, and has enlivened the matter with occasional touches of sarcastic 

 humour. For instance, in explaining how the ancient hospitals were always 

 provided with plenty of priests to look after the welfare of the souls of the sick, 

 he first quotes from an old manuscript: "This" (the Hospital of the Blessed 

 Virgin Mary in Leicestershire) " was a sumptuous monastery, entirely built by the 

 said Duke for canons regulars, with an hospital well disposed and distinguished 

 for men and women and so well provided for, that no hospital in England was 

 more commodious/' and then adds, " We may well believe this, for its inmates 

 were a dean, twelve canons prebendaries, twelve vicars, with other necessary 

 attendants, as also ten infirm poor people and ten lusty women to serve the 

 infirm. It seems an intolerable deal of ecclesiastics to a poor halfpennyworth of 

 infirm." On the whole these two lectures provide much useful information in an 

 easily digested form. 



A Treatise on Hygiene and Public Health, with special reference to the 

 Tropics. By Birendra Nath Ghosh, F.R.F.P.S., and Jahar Lal Das, 

 L.M.S., with an Introduction by Col. Kenneth MacLeod, M.D., LL.D., 

 F.R.C.S. [Pp. xvi + 394. Second Edition.] (Calcutta: Hilton & Co. 

 191 5. Price 4 Rs. or 6s. net.) 



We are glad to see that this useful little book has already reached a second 

 edition. It is a work of the usual type and contains the usual matter, but is 

 certainly comparatively well done. It will be of distinct value to Sanitary 

 Officers, Assistant Surgeons, Hospital Assistants, private persons, and, indeed, to 

 many who have not acquired a complete professional training on the subject. To 

 those who have, the work is of course somewhat too short to add much to their 

 knowledge. The work makes no pretence to deal with the larger theory of 



