September 6, 1917] 



NATURE 



SOME RECENT DANISH MEDICO- 

 HISTORICAL WRITINGS.^ 

 DURING the last few years there has been a 

 widespread revival of the study of medical 

 history in many countries, and a considerable 

 number of professorships have been founded to 

 teach a branch of the curriculum which is con- 

 sidered by many to be invaluable from an educa- 

 tional point of view. Some medico-historical 

 societies have also arisen in France, America, 

 and England, and, judging by their literary out- 

 put, work is going on very actively. The small 

 but highly intellectual country of Denmark is not 

 behind the others, as is seen in the issue, under 

 the direction of Prof. Vilhelm Maar, of the 

 University of Copenhagen, of an important series 

 of small monographs which we have before us. 

 Up to the present fourteen of these have been 

 published and cover a wide field of medical his- 

 torical research. They are the work mostly of 

 Danes, chiefly of the University of Copenhagen, i 



Thus Finnur J6nsson (i)^ professor of Northern \ 

 philology, gives an interesting account of various I 

 diseases in northern Scandinavia and Iceland in | 

 ancient times, of particular importance being his 

 statements as to the wide geographical distribu- 

 tion of leprosy, small-pox, pulmonary and mental I 

 diseases. There would appear to be no records 

 of syphilis, and, indeed, venereal diseases | 

 generally were but little known. I 



Kristian Caroe (2) has written a short account I 

 of the relation of the medieval bedell to medicine, ! 

 and in particular to the practice of surgery. The 

 exposition of the doctrines on the origin of mental j 

 diseases in the classical period has been ably 

 carried out by Dr. J. L. Heiberg (3). Dr. Ernest | 

 Wickersheimer'(4), the well-known librarian of | 

 the Academy of Medicine in Paris, continues the \ 

 studies on the treatment of hydrophobia by sea- j 

 water which he had published some years pre- | 

 viously. A very exhaustive account of trephining | 

 in primitive times comes from the pen of Dr. I 

 S0ren Hansen (5), and is well illustrated. Ample | 

 justice is done to the fairly extensive literature | 

 extant on the subject. Dr. K. K. K. Lunds- 

 gaard (6) deals with the well-worn theme of the 

 history of spectacles and eye-glasses, and brings 

 the facts well up to date. In the seventh 1 

 brochure Dr. J. W. S. Johnsson writes with 

 knowledge and humour on medieval quacks and 

 their advertisements. 



Chr. Barfoed (8), in the compass of eighty- ; 

 eight pages, has managed to dig deeply into the j 

 question of the laying on of hands in its religious ' 

 and therapeutic aspects from ancient to modern ! 



' " Medicmsk-historiske Smaaskrifter." Ved Vilh-lm Maar. (K</)ben- 



vn : Vilhelm Trvdes Forlag.) (i> Finnur Jfinsson : " La- gekunsten i 



nordi-^ke Oldtid " : 1912. (2) Kristian Car<f>e : " Bi^ddel oe Kirurg " ; 



'■, {3) .!• f'- Heibere; : " Sindssygdom i den classiske O'dtid"; 1913. 



Krnest Wicker'sheimer : " Hundegilskab og Strandhade " : 1913. (5) 



•n Hansen : " Primitiv Trepanation" : 1Q13. (6) K. K. K. Liindseaard : 



i rillernes Historic " : 1913. (7) T. W. S. Johnsson : " Lidt om lande- 



•rnes og 'aejjernes Reklame i /Kldretid " ; 1914. (8) Chr. Barfoed: 



Inandsp:\alaeggelse" ; 1914. (9) Carl Jul. Salomonsen : " Asklepios' 



jligdom pa Kos"; 1914. (10 and 11) "Felix Platters Ungdotn- 



ndringer, skildringer fra Basel og Montpellier i Reformationstiden, 



r<;atte og udgivne af Thora Gertz " ; 1915. (12) Axel Garboe : 



I nhj<frrningen " ; 1915. (n) Jul. Wiberg : " Kriselaeren i oldtidens 



licm": 1916. (14) E. Ingerslev: " Ambrosius Rhodius og ham 



^tru": 1916. 



times. The practice of the royal touch in Eng- 

 land from Edward the Confessor to Queen Anne 

 is dealt with at some length. Charles II. seems 

 to have carried out this royal duty with great 

 assiduity, for, at the .rate of 3700 a year, he 

 touched 92,102 sick persons between 1660 and 

 1682. After George I. the practice fell into dis- 

 repute in England. The relationship of "laying 

 on " to Christian Science and its extraordinary 

 modern dissemination is also dealt with. 



Carl Jul. Salomonsen (9), the eminent professor 

 of general pathology in Copenhagen, deals in his 

 own characteristic way with the island of Cos 

 and the home of Hippocrates, basing his work 

 on the remarkably successful excavations carried 

 out by Rudolf Herzog in 1902, which have added 

 immensely to our knowledge of this insular home 

 of the medical art. 



One of the largest of Prof. Maar's series is a 

 translation of Felix Platter's autobiographical 

 reminiscences of his youth (10 and n). Platter, as 

 is well known, was one of a medical family of the 

 name who. added great lustre to the town of 

 Basel in the Middle Ages. He himself was in 

 practice there for a large part of the sixteenth 

 century, and after his return from Montpellier 

 was one of the first to dissect the human body 

 and to teach the Vesalian anatomy. His auto- 

 biography, including as it does his journey to 

 Montpellier and his study there, is an important 

 contribution to the history of the time of the 

 Reformation. 



Of less purely medical interest is Axel Garboe 's 

 (12) work on unicorns and their relation to exist- 

 ing animals like the narwhal. Dr. Julius 

 Wiberg (13) gives an elaborate account of the 

 doctrines held among the ancients as to the 

 causes, onset, and termination of crises and 

 critical days in diseases — a subject which modern 

 medicine has not yet unravelled in its entirety. 

 The series closes with a small book by the late 

 Prof. Ingerslev {14) on Dr. Ambrose Rode, a 

 German doctor who practised first in Copenhagen 

 and then in Christiania in the seventeenth cen- 

 tury. 



Prof. Maar is to be congratulated on having 

 gathered together such an interesting amount of 

 original material, and when more peaceful times 

 come again it is to be hoped that he will be able 

 to keep the historical flame burning in that small 

 Scandinavian country to which we are bound by 

 so many ties over so many centuries. \V. B. 



NOTES. 

 According to the Chemist and Druggist, Prof. E. 

 Buchner, director of the Chemical Institute of Wiirz- 

 burg University, and Nobel Laureate in chemistry for 

 1907, has been killed in action on the Western front. 



Senor Augusto Villanueva, Banco de Chile, San- 

 tiago de Chile, has accepted the position of representa- 

 tive and corresponding member of the Ramsay Memo- 

 rial Committee for Chile, and is taking steps to pro- 

 mote the objects of the memorial in Chile by the forma, 

 tion of a local committee and in other ways. 

 The Ramsay Memorial Fund now amounts to 



NO. 2497, VOL. 100] 



