Book Notes
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUPThis catalog brings together the Wellcome's collection of Arabic medical manuscripts in a new way: it includes many incomplete and anonymous manuscripts that were excluded by the first cataloger, Dr. Albert Zakê Iskandar (p. 1); it now reflects the present state of the collection (p. 2); and it applies "the modern approach to cataloguing oriental manuscripts" (p. 2). Instead of being merely a descriptive guide to the collection, this current work is intended to "help various specialists from conservators to historians of medical ethics to use the collections" (p. 3). [End Page 609]
The Cocoanut Grove was a nightclub in Boston's downtown theater district. The fire that consumed it in 1942 killed nearly five hundred people; fewer than two hundred survived. For historians of medicine, this fire is linked with the names Oliver Cope and Francis Moore—surgeons at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Cope was the staff surgeon in charge of treating burns; Moore was a surgical resident. Cope's new procedure, which replaced the standard cleaning and debridement with ointment and protective dressing, saved an extraordinary percentage of severely burned patients, and led the way to further improvements in the treatment of burns.
The book concentrates on the legal, not the medical, ramifications of the disaster—an unsurprising choice, since the author is a lawyer. What attention is devoted to the medical aspects is not closely documented (the book contains an index but no endnotes) and is already well known. The book is nevertheless a lively and accessible account of the fire and its consequences.
