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Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75.1 (2001) 188-189



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Book Notes


Rick Bowers. Thomas Phaer and "The Boke of Chyldren" (1544). Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 201. Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999. xii + 100 pp. $22.00; £19.00.

In 1544 Thomas Phaer, physician and polymath, published the first English book on the medical care of children. Scholars have often overlooked this work because it is buried in a translation of a French text on regimen that exists in only one known copy, at the Huntington Library. The second, freestanding edition of 1553 is only slightly better known. Phaer was an Oxford M.D.; a classicist (his vacations were spent working on a translation of the Aeneid, which he published in 1558); and a skilled public servant, keeping his place as an M.P. in both Mary's and Elizabeth's reigns. The Boke of Chyldren is part of his lifelong mission to put knowledge in the hands of ordinary people. His book on law, A New Book of Presidents (i.e., legal precedent) went into twenty-seven editions from 1543 to 1656, and was particularly directed to those who had little Latin, as well as to those seeking to educate their children in reading and understanding common legal books. Phaer consciously chose to publish in the vernacular, fostering a sense of linguistic nationhood, and showing his fellow men and women the remedies a beneficent God had placed within their reach. In his book about children, Phaer criticized those physicians who did not want medical knowledge published in English. He asked, "Wolde they have no man to knowe but onely they?" (p. 27), and called them "merchants of our lives and deaths" (p. 27) whose monopoly on practice enabled them to set high prices on health. Bowers provides an excellent introduction, situating the work in an exemplary range of contexts. He has a delightfully concise turn of phrase, referring to the age-range covered by the book as "post-obstetric and pre-etiquette" (p. 19). His textual apparatus makes this book valuable to a number of audiences; for instance, he includes a glossary of the medical authors cited by Phaer, including the delightfully titled "King Aviceyne of Arabie."



Loren Humphrey. Quinine and Quarantine: Missouri Medicine through the Years. Missouri Heritage Readers. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000. xi + 129 pp. Ill. $9.95 (paperbound).

Intended mainly for new adult readers, Quinine and Quarantine explores medicine in Missouri from 1799 to 1999. The book is divided into four parts: "Potluck Medicine, 1799-1848"; "Community Medicine, 1849-1898"; "Standards for Medicine, 1899-1948"; and "Scientific Medicine, 1949-1999." A brief bibliography (which concentrates on regional information) and an index conclude the book. [End Page 188]



Edward J. Huth and T. Jock Murray, eds. Medicine in Quotations: Views of Health and Disease through the Ages. Philadelphia: American College of Physicians, 2000. xvi + 524 pp. $49.00.

"Is a New Collection Needed?" asks a heading in the introduction (p. x). Answering their rhetorical question, the editors acknowledge three earlier books of medical quotations, citing Maurice Strauss's Familiar Medical Quotations (1968) as "the most impressive" (p. x). Still, they write, the scientific and economic changes of the past three decades in medicine open the way for a new compendium; moreover, this new book is more specific than the Strauss volume, supplying not just a reference to an entire work but the exact location of each quotation. Methodology is a crucial part of this volume. In their introduction, the editors take us through "Step 1: Compiling the Quotations," "Step 2: Selecting the Quotations for This Book," and into "The Future," in which they plan further editions, encouraging readers to submit their own quotations. A separate section, "Notes for Readers," explains the organization and attribution of the 3,099 quotations that follow. The quotations themselves occupy less than three-quarters of the book: the "Author-Citation Index" takes up almost 100 pages, and the subject index, another 50.

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