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NA TURE 



[August 26, 1922 



ments which are taking place even now in America 

 are likely to produce far-reaching changes, such as 

 the so-called wired wireless, by which radio trans- 



mission is conducted for part of its path by an ordinary 

 wired line. What these developments do, however, 

 must be left for the future to determine. 



Third International Congress of the History of Medicine. 



T'HE papers read at this Congress, which was held 

 J in London on July 17-22 under the presidency 

 of Dr. Charles Singer, may be classified in four main 

 groups according to their subjects, viz., epidemi- 

 ology, anatomy, pharmacy, and veterinary medicine. 

 Among the papers on epidemiology special mention 

 may be made of those by Prof. Jeanselme, on bubonic 

 plague in the Middle Ages, in which a relationship 

 between famine and plague was shown ; by Dr. 

 Ernest Wickersheimer on the black plague at Stras- 

 bourg in 13)0, with extracts from a contemporary 

 document ; by Miss M. Buer on the decrease of 

 epidemic diseases in the 18th and early 19th cen- 

 turies, a decrease attributed by her to improvements 

 in agriculture, improvements in house and town 

 planning and the advance in medicine ; and an 

 interesting account by Sir William Collins of Sir 

 Edwin Chadwick, the father of English sanitary 

 science. Other papers of epidemiological interest 

 were those of Dr. Torkomian of Constantinople on 

 inoculation against small-pox by the ancient Ar- 

 menians, of Dr. Belohlavek of Prague on epidemics 

 in Bohemia in the Middle Ages, and of Dr. Neveu of 

 Paris on plague in Tuscany in the fifteenth century. 



Perhaps the most interesting contribution to the 

 historv of anatomy was the paper of Prof. Wright on 

 Leonardo da Vinci's work on the structure of the 

 heart, in which it was stated that Leonardo was the 

 first to show the exact attachment of the chorda? 

 tendineae to the cusps of the auriculo-ventricular 

 valves, the first to direct attention to the dilatations 

 of the origins of the aorta and pulmonary valves, the 

 first to note the occasional presence of an inter- 

 auricular foramen or foramen ovale, and the first to 

 describe the moderator band in the right ventricle of 

 the heart. Dr. Donald Campbell made a communica- 

 tion on the significance of the Arabic MSS. of Galen's 

 work on anatomical administration, in which he 

 suggested that the preservation of this work when 

 portions of it were totally lost otherwise indicated 

 that the Muslems did not completely destroy the 

 second library of Alexandria, as is generally supposed. 

 In a paper on the anatomical studies of Descartes in 

 Holland, M. Fosseyeux showed by extracts from con- 

 temporary literature that Descartes, who was the 

 grandson and great grandson of medical men, studied 

 anatomy both in the human subject and in animals 

 at Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leyden, and Harlem 

 between the years 1630 and 1638. Other anatomical 

 papers were those by Dr. T. Wilson Parry on the 

 collective evidence of trephination of the human skull 

 in Great Britain during prehistoric times, by Dr. 

 Kathleen Lander on women as anatomists, by Dr. 

 Krumbhaar of Philadelphia on the beginnings of 

 anatomical instruction in the United States, and by 

 Dr. J. D. Comrie on earby anatomical instruction in 

 Edinburgh. 



In an historical sketch of pharmacy in Great 

 Britain and Ireland, Mr. J. B. Gilmour showed that 

 it was not until the 1 6th century that any beginning 

 was made with the regulation of the practice of 

 medicine or the sale of drugs, and even down to the 

 18th century the sale and dispensing of drugs was 

 chiefly in the hands of the physicians and apothe- 

 caries. The paper deals successively with the evolu- 

 tion of the pharmacist, the history of pharmacy law, 

 the origin of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great 



NO. 2756, VOL. IIO] 



Britain, pharmaceutical education and science, the 

 protection of professional interests, pharmacy in 

 Ireland, and the history of pharmacopoeias and 

 pharmaceutical literature. In his paper on art in the 

 Italian pharmacy of the 15th century Prof. Casti- 

 glioni of Trieste stated that at the beginning of the 

 15th century the practice of medicine was closely 

 associated with that of the apothecary, so that the 

 druggist's shop was often an intellectual centre which 

 served not only as a consulting-room for the doctor 

 but also as a place where books and curiosities were 

 exhibited. Prof. Castiglioni showed a large number 

 of photographs of pharmacy jars from his private 

 collection, illustrating the development of medicine 

 in the 15th century. Mr. C. J. S. Thompson traced 

 the history of " Hiera Picra," a remedy composed 

 mainly of aloes and colocynth, which was first used, 

 according to tradition, in the temples of /Escu- 

 lapius in Greece and is still sold in the pharmacies of 

 Great Britain and the Continent. M. Buchet con- 

 tributed a paper on the history of legislation concern- 

 ing poisons, and M. Fialon described the ancient 

 statutes of the apothecaries of Lyons. 



Major-General Sir Frederick Smith gave an interest- 

 ing description, illustrated by lantern slides, of the 

 position of veterinary anatomy in England during 

 the 1 6th, 17th, and 18th centuries, in which he 

 emphasised the following points : (1) The compara- 

 tive absence of information on the subject, in spite 

 of the fact that up to the 15th century practically 

 only the anatomy of animals was studied by students 

 of human medicine. (2) The interest shown by lay 

 writers on a subject in which they were ignorant, 

 but the importance of which in the advancement of 

 veterinary knowledge they fully recognised. These 

 men wrote on the subject and drew on their imagina- 

 tion. (3) The absence of any veterinary school in 

 this country until the end of the 18th century, when 

 one was founded in 1791 with Vial de Sambel as 

 professor. Prof. F. J. Cole of Reading read a paper 

 on Ruini on the anatomy of the horse, a work which, 

 published in 1598, was the first monograph on the 

 anatomy of an animal. Other papers on veterinary 

 medicine were read by Mr. F. E. Bullock on "Mulomedi- 

 cina Chironis," a compilation of ancient veterinary 

 treatises; by M. H. J. Sevilla on the syndrome of 

 colic in the Greek Hippiatric writings, and by M. 

 Moule on the history of glanders in Greek and Roman 

 writers. 



In addition to the papers on the history of epi- 

 demiology, anatomy, pharmacy, and veterinary 

 medicine, communications on various topics of 

 medico - historical interest were read. In a paper 

 entitled " Magistri Salernitani nondum cogniti," Dr. 

 Capparoni of Rome gave an account of a manu- 

 script which he had found in the cathedral of St. 

 Matthew at Salerno, containing the names of thirty- 

 one hitherto unknown medical men from the second 

 half of the tenth to the sixteenth century, most of 

 whom were monks or ecclesiastics of some kind. 

 This discovery confirmed Dr. Capparoni's view that 

 scientific medicine at this period was mainly practised 

 by monks until the papal prohibition in the 12th 

 century to practise medicine outside the cloisters, 

 with the result that the school of Salerno was founded 

 by laymen. In a paper on Dante and Averrhoism in 

 Italy, Prof. Castiglioni discussed the relations of 



