392 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1269 



living and dead, and many other contributions 

 to the history of medicine. Judged by the 

 illustrations alone, this periodical will always 

 remain one of the most imiwrtant reference 

 repositories of medical history. Among his 

 other works were monographs on the "Taenia " 

 (1891), the "Coccidia" (1900), a large and 

 important treatise on "Mosquitoes," (1905), a 

 German-French dictionary of anatomical and 

 zoological terms (1908) and a series of mono- 

 graphs on the role of insects in infection, 

 which was continued during the recent war in 

 a series of booklets on insects dangerous to 

 soldiers in the trenches, not unlike the series 

 gotten up by Professor A. E. Shipley in Eng- 

 land. To anthropology, Blanchard made con- 

 tributions on " steatopygy in African women " 

 (1883), "the seventh cervical rib of man" 

 (1895), "atavism in man" (1885), "poly- 

 mastia" (1885) and on "animals injurious 

 to the human race" (1888). Early and late, 

 he did much for medical and zoological nomen- 

 clature (1889-1917) .2 



In 1902, Blanchard founded the Institut de 

 medecine colon iale. the first Erench school of 

 tropical medicine, and in the same year 

 (1902), he also foimded the Erench Society 

 of History of Medicine, a pleiad of talented 

 workers, who met in one of the halls of the 

 medical faculty and whose transactions have 

 been preserved to date. This society has been 

 known to travelers as the most hospitable and 

 attractive of all organizations devoted to this 

 subject, a sort of Mecca for the medical 

 historians. 



The last seven years of Blanchard's hard 

 working life were crowned by his great work 

 on medical epigraphy (1909-1915), the intent 

 of which is well described in the subtitle, 

 " Corpus inscriptionum ad medicinam bio- 

 logiamque spectantium," in other words, no 

 less than a complete collection of all European 

 inscriptions and epitaphs relating to medicine 

 from the time of the Middle Ages down. The 

 plan of this undertaking was originally pro- 

 iwsed by Blanchard to the Societe frangaise 

 d'histoire de medecine on December 11, 1907, 

 but it was soon discovered that funds were 



2 His last contribution to the subject Is in Bull. 

 Acad, de mid., Paris, 1916, LXXVI., 380-389. 



not available and the financing of the propo- 

 sition was then assimaed by Blanchard himself. 

 As it stands, it is one of the most enduring 

 monuments ever made to medico-historical re- 

 search by the travel method. As far as pub- 

 lished, the work comprises some 1,258 inscrip- 

 tions collected all over Europe and the United 

 States by Blanchard, Wickersheimer and 

 others, each inscription being furnished with 

 an appropriate commentary. Before the ap- 

 pearance of this work, little had been done in 

 medical epigraphy beyond a monograph on 

 medicine in the Roman inscriptions by Jacopo 

 Arata (1902)^ and a study of the Greek med- 

 ical inscriptions by J. Oehler (1909).'' It is 

 noT? well known that our knowledge of public 

 medicine in antiquity has been largely evolved 

 from the Greek and Eoman inscriptions. It 

 is to be hoped that the subject of medical 

 epigraphy will henceforth become an interna- 

 tional matter of continuous record and re- 

 search, to carry out the intention of Blan- 

 chard's great work. He was himself one of 

 the noblest advocates of internationalism in 

 science. 



Blanchard had been described by those who 

 knew him as a man of the most genial, deb- 

 onair and attractive type. An engraving in 

 the Surgeon General's Library represents him 

 in the costly vestments of the Paris Faculty, 

 with jabot and dalmatic, his breast covered 

 with many decorations; a towering figiu-e, the 

 countenance expressive of the utmost intel- 

 lectual refinement. The clean-cut ironic fea- 

 tures betoken the type of character which 

 might be either godlike or satanic, but the 

 abiding impression is one of ineffable honte 

 de cceur. In the many group pictures which 

 have appeared, representing Blanchard among 

 his colleagues, he invariably stands out as the 

 gentilhomme Kar l^oxqv, as Liszt, Tchaikovski, 

 Saint Saens did among the musicians. In 

 the decease of this distinguished savant, 

 French science sustains a grave loss. 



F. H. Garrison 



Akmy Medical Museum 



< OEHer, Janus, Amsterdam, 1909, XIV., 4, 111. 

 3 Arata, ' ' L 'arte medica nelle iscrizioni latini, ' ' 

 Genoa, 1902. 



