Booknotes

C. Helen Brock. Dr. James Douglas’s Papers and Drawings in the Hunterian Collection, Glasgow University Library: A Handlist. Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, University of Glasgow, no. 6. Glasgow: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1994. 170 pp. £5.50 (paperbound).

James Douglas (1675–1742), remembered eponymously for the “Pouch of Douglas” (a fold in the peritoneal lining), was a Scottish-born physician who practiced in London and developed some reknown as both clinician and anatomist. His papers came into the possession of his pupil William Hunter, and now are now held as part of the Hunterian Collection in Glasgow. C. Helen Brock, a zoologist with an interest in the history of comparative anatomy, has previously published an exemplary guide to Hunter’s papers and drawings (noted in this journal in 1992 [66: 696]) and, with this handlist, continues her fine work in documenting eighteenth-century British medical science.

Marco Beretta. Bibliotheca Lavoisieriana: The Catalogue of the Library of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. Biblioteca di Nuncius, Studi e Testi, no. 16; Uppsala Studies in History of Science, no. 20. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1995. 363 pp. Ill. L 75,000.

Revolutionary authorities seized parts of Lavoisier’s book collection in 1794, dispersing most of what they took before returning a few hundred volumes to his widow in October 1795. The largest intact fragments, now located at Cornell and Bordeaux, contain a relatively small proportion of the original library; but manuscript sources, including lists compiled by the confiscators, have allowed Marco Beretta to construct a fascinating, but admittedly incomplete, catalog of 1,746 titles. Entries in the catalog indicate whether Beretta found the French chemist’s actual copy or whether he merely provides a generic record for an edition known to have been owned by Lavoisier. In addition to the catalog itself, its appendices, and an index, Beretta provides two introductory essays: “Between Nature and Literature,” a plea to historians of science to take documentation on books, collections, and reading habits seriously as evidence about how early modern scientists developed knowledge; and “The Library of Lavoisier,” a detailed history of the collection and a description of how the catalog was compiled.

Constantino Gry of the collection and a description of how the catalog Los estudios sobre la salud pública en la ciudad de Valencia, 1800–1900. Científicos Valencianos. Valencia, Spain: Ajuntament de Valencia, 1994. 235 pp. Ill. $37.00 (paperbound).

First in the series Científicos Valencianos, sponsored by the municipality of Valencia, this book appropriately honors Constantino Gómez Reig (1846–1931), an important local physician and public health reformer who helped bring the ideas and techniques of scientific medicine to Spain. This attractive volume includes José M. Lopez Piñero and Jorge Navarro Pérez’s 77-page discussion of Gómez Reig’s life and accomplishments, followed by reprints of nine papers by Gómez Reig himself.

Jack D. Welsh. Medical Histories of Confederate Generals. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1995. xviii + 297 pp. $35.00.

This book is a compilation of medical histories, including “wounds, illness, accidents and causes of death” (p. xi), of the 425 generals featured in Ezra J. Warner’s Generals in Gray (1975). The alphabetically arranged sketches vary in length from the couple of sentences recounting Isham Warren Garrott’s death in June 1863 from a bullet that “pierced his heart” (p. 77) to the three pages describing the various injuries and ailments that plagued Confederate General-in-Chief Robert E. Lee throughout his life. The individual histories outline each subject’s education and military career. They list place and date of birth and death and the burial location, if known. Sources of medical information are cited at the end of each entry. Included in the work is a glossary of medical terms used in the text, with both current definitions and nineteenth-century usage. The author has appended an extensive bibliography of manuscript sources, unpublished and published materials, death and interment records, dissertations, and contemporary newspapers consulted during the preparation of the volume. There is also a “Sequence of Medical Incidents”: a chronological and geographical listing of wounds, accidents...