Book Notes

This book contains seventy-nine medical paintings executed in the late 1980s and early '90s by the Nepalese artist Romio Shrestha (b. 1960) and his atelier. Shrestha's paintings are faithful copies of the well-known medical tangkas from the Blue Beryl commentary on the Four Medical Tantras. In the introduction, Janet Gyatso, historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine at Harvard Divinity School, provides the cultural and political context for the production of the Blue Beryl under the direction of the regent of the fifth Dalai Lama, Desi Sangye Gyatso (1653–1705).

Shrestha's copies of all seventy-nine tangkas are reproduced here in full color and as large as the 9x12 trim size allows. Their subject matter includes Tibetan anatomy, physiology, etiology, diagnosis, hygiene, embryology, pharmacology, demonology, and medical lineages, among other aspects of medicine, as well as many glimpses of Tibetan material culture and daily life. Unfortunately, however, the value of this book for historians of medicine will be limited by the fact that it does not provide any general discussion of the Tibetan medical tradition. While English translations of captions and labels provide identifying information, it would be difficult for those unfamiliar with Tibetan medicine to gain anything more than an aesthetic appreciation of the artwork. On the other hand, for those with prior knowledge of Tibetan medicine, the availability of these images with English translations at an inexpensive price will be a development that is most welcomed.

C. Pierce Salguero

Johns Hopkins University

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen. Making Minds and Madness: From Hysteria to Depression. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 266 pp. $45.00 (paperbound, 978-0-521-71688-8), $108.00 (hardcover, 978-0-521-88863-9).

In this study of the history of psychiatry, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen combines previously published papers with new material to address "the historicity of 'mental illnesses,' the coproduction of psychic 'facts,"' and the "performative character of our psychological and psychiatric theories" (p. vii). Over four parts and thirteen chapters, Borch-Jacobsen argues that most mental illnesses are "the product of varying expectations shared and negotiated by therapists and patients" (p. 1). Part 1 charts the "emergence and spread of the notions of 'psychic trauma,' 'dissociation,' and 'repression'" (p. vii). Part 2 discusses how people react to expectations they are exposed to "so that psychological and psychiatric theories inevitably influence and mold the 'psychical reality' they claim to describe" (p. viii). Part 3 covers Freud and psychoanalysis, while the book's final section examines the "rise of biological psychiatry and its consequences" (p. ix).

The Editors

Jan K. Herman. Navy Medicine in Vietnam: Oral Histories from Dien Bien Phu to the Fall of Saigon. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2009. 365 pp. Ill. $55.00 (978-0-7864-3999-7).

Using first-person accounts by patients, navy doctors, nurses, and corpsmen, Jan K. Herman provides a chronicle of the U.S. Navy Medical Department's participation in Vietnam. The book begins in September 1954 with the hospital ship Haven's rescue of the French survivors of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and ends with the rescue of refugees fleeing the fall of South Vietnam in 1974. The book features more than fifty historic photos. An epilogue presents interviewees' responses to the question "Do you still think about Vietnam?"; Appendix 1 provides information on what life was like after Vietnam for those interviewed, as well as what became of the navy hospital ships; Appendix 2 describes Medal of Honor citations for those whose stories appear in the book; and Appendix 3 provides a...