Secondary Sources in the History of Canadian Medicine: A Bibliography / Bibliographie de l'histoire de la médecine (review)

Charles G. Roland and Jacques Bernier, comps. Secondary Sources in the History of Canadian Medicine: A Bibliography / Bibliographie de l'histoire de la médecine. Vol. 2. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2000. xxxiii + 245 pp. $U.S. 74.95 (0-88920-344-X).

It was with great anticipation that we, the Canadian medical history community, awaited the second volume of Chuck Roland's Secondary Sources in the History of Canadian Medicine, and we were not disappointed. The first, and greatest, improvement was the participation of Jacques Bernier of Laval University in the project. Through his additions of the French-Canadian historiography, Berniers demonstrates the depth and wealth of medical history in the francophone community. The French literature in most ways parallels English academic concerns, although, as would be expected given research initiatives over the last twenty-five years, the French historiography is stronger in terms of demography. The unified approach in this volume should encourage students with even the most basic skills in the other official language to attempt to examine their topics' literature with a truly national approach.

Also encouraging, and reflective of the state of the literature over the last fifteen years, is the expansion of topics relating to diseases and injuries, and social issues, including public health, warfare, and sexuality--areas to which today's students gravitate. Perhaps in the introduction to future volumes, Professors Roland and Bernier could examine critically the sociopolitical underpinnings of the subject listings chosen, since even the venerable National Library of Medicine, upon whose listings this volume relies, may be guilty of cultural biases. For instance, the classification of Sex Behavior is startling in its composition: Roger Thompson's "Attitudes towards Homosexuality in the Seventeenth-Century New England Colonies" ¹ is cited, although there is some contemporary debate as to whether homosexuality was medicalized before the nineteenth century. If, in some future decade, homosexuality is demedicalized, will the references in subsequent bibliographies be deleted?

Another heartening aspect of this volume is Roland and Bernier's promise to use modern electronic tools to update and keep vital this traditional printed source, and their invitation to the reader to contact Barbara Craig at the University of Toronto concerning additions, errors, and omissions. One entry that immediately comes to mind, also in the subject listing of Sex Behavior, is Donald H. Akenson's At Face Value: The Life and Times of Eliza McCormack/John White (1990). This book, purportedly about a woman who disguised herself as a man for professional advancement, was, as Akenson later admitted, a hoax perpetrated upon an unsuspecting academic and reading public who purchased the piece of fiction in good faith. Certainly it should be deleted from future volumes.

Secondary Sources in the History of Medicine, volume 1, has been the first source to which one turned, particularly in guiding students. Now there is an even better one.

Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
Malaspina University-College

 

Notes

1. Roger Thompson, "Attitudes towards Homosexuality in the Seventeenth-Century New England Colonies," J. Amer. Studies, 1989, 23 (1): 27-40.

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