Book Reviews

Book Reviews Trew made himself known as an able extensively and at the same level with the medical practitioner, teacher of anatomy and physician Loelius at the Ansbach court. As a botany, collector in natural history, editor of non-resident personal physician to the same one of the first medical periodicals-the court, Trew was frequently consulted by his Commercium litterarium-and of colleague. In the patronage relationship magnificently illustrated botanical works (see between (noble) patient and doctor, Trew's also my notice of T Schnalke [ed.], Natur im geographical distance from the court rather Bild in Med. Hist. 1996, 40: 529). His enhanced his medical authority. Patients' surviving correspondence, a total of 4,831 estimation of his medical advice "from a letters to him and 873 from him, was linked to distance" is likewise reflected in his a large extent to these activities. Schnalke has consultations with the younger Physicus selected for his study five representative Gruner in Grafenberg near Nuremberg. Perhaps correspondences, in which Trew entertained the most remarkable of the five dialogues with a medical professor (Albrecht correspondences studied by Schnalke is that von Haller), a court surgeon (Carl Friedrich with May, an apprenticeship-trained surgeon, Gladbach), a court physician (Johann Lorenz who had been taught anatomy by Trew in Ludwig Loelius), a Physicus, i.e. medical Nuremberg and then went to Strasbourg, where officer (Christian Albrecht Gotthold Gruner), he made an academic career as a surgical and an academic surgeon (Johann Cristoph teacher, prosector, and demonstrator of May). anatomy. In various ways May was aided in his A number of issues that are characteristic of career by Trew as well as by the Strasbourg Enlightenment medicine feature in these professors of anatomy and surgery Johann letters, e.g. the introduction of smallpox Jacob Salzmann and Heinrich Albert Nicolai. inoculation, difficulties in the procurement of May, who became a member of the Paris corpses for anatomical study, and the trade in Academie des Sciences, can be seen as a prime anatomical preparations. More important, example of the "academic rise of surgery". Yet however, is the insight into the personal and his case also shows that this depended not only professional relations between the different on the personal ability and ambition of types of medical men exemplified by Trew's surgeons, but also on the support of academic correspondents. Haller became for Trew the physicians. critical authority in anatomical and botanical On the whole, Schnalke's analysis of Trew's matters. As a young physician in Berne, Haller medical correspondence provides a had initially sought contact with the established differentiated picture both of physician-surgeon Nuremberg doctor and naturalist. However, and of physician-physician relations in the soon after Haller's appointment to a eighteenth century. Communication was wide- professorship in Gottingen in 1736, Trew could spread and sometimes intense, yet without not keep pace with him in scientific research, erasing differences in status. It is to be hoped and the balance of power between the two that this careful work will serve as a model for shifted. Interestingly, Trew had previously further studies into the various relations rejected the offer of a chair at the new between eighteenth-century healers. university of Gottingen, made to him by the Hanoverian court through its surgeon Andreas-Holger Maehle, Gladbach. Despite his elevated occupation and University of Durham the fact that he had studied and travelled with Trew, Gladbach was hardly accepted by the Nuremberg doctor as a scholarly Detlef Haberland, Engelbert Kaempfer correspondent: the status difference between 1651-1716: a biography, trans. Peter Hogg, academic physician and surgeon was not London, The British Library, 1996, pp. vii, overcome. By contrast, Trew communicated 158, illus., £35.00, $70.00 (0-7123-4503-5).

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.33.42, on 30 Sep 2021 at 05:57:57, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300065881 Book Reviews This compact and lucid biography tells the of Japanese medicine, particularly the practices story of the man subsequently known as the of acupuncture and moxibustion. The Japanese "Humboldt of the seventeenth century", on were just as eager to learn of the latest account of his extensive travels and developments in European medicine. Indeed, contribution to the study of geography. If the experiences of Kaempfer, and of anyone deserves this accolade then it was contemporaries such as Francois Bernier in certainly Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716), India, show that medicine provided one of the who made extensive notes and sketches of the most important cultural bridges between the topography, arts and manufactures of the cultures of Asia and Europe-the significance countries of Asia, and particularly of Russia, of which we are only just beginning to realize. Persia and Japan. But this label serves merely to highlight one facet of Kaempfer's Mark Harrison, Sheffield Hallam University remarkable, peripatetic career. Besides being a geographer, Kaempfer wrote extensively on the political and natural history of the countries he Francis Maddison and Emilie Savage- visited, as well as on the practice of medicine, Smith, Science, tools and magic, Part One. in which he earned his living. Body and spirit, mapping the universe; Emilie Kaempfer was born in the Westphalian town Savage-Smith with contributions from Ralph of Lemgo, the son of a Lutheran pastor, who Pinder-Wilson and Tim Stanley, Part Two. encouraged him in the study of the humanities Mundane worlds, The Nasser D Khalili and natural history. After studying a range of Collection of Islamic Art, vol. 12, London, The subjects (including medicine) at the Nour Foundation in association with Azimuth universities of Krakow, Konigsberg and Editions and Oxford University Press, 1997, Uppsala, Kaempfer left the latter to find pp. 439, illus., £185.00 (0-19-7276105). employment with a Swedish commercial legation bound for Russia and Persia. In Persia, This volume both illustrates splendidly items Kaempfer left the legation and joined the in a magnificent collection of Islamic art and Dutch East India Company, working for provides the highest level of scholarly several years as a surgeon in the port of commentary on these items. The Nasser D Hormuz. Brief sojourns in India and Batavia Khalili Collection of Islamic Art "documents", were followed by residence in Japan as its owner states in the Foreword, "the (1690-92), where Kaempfer was physician at artistic achievements of the Islamic world". the Dutch factory at Deshima. During this This two-part volume stands apart in being time, he collected notes for a political and devoted to items which, though often natural history of Japan which was published incidentally beautiful and well-crafted, are posthumously from among his manuscript primarily functional, and documents the high collection, purchased by Sir Hans Sloane. This achievements in science and technology of that work-translated into several languages- world. The aim is not to indicate (as is often attracted a wide audience and established done) how the Islamic world contributed to Kaempfer's place in the pantheon of travellers Western European culture, but rather to place and natural historians. the objects within a specifically Islamic By contrast, the works published during society-a society in which (in common with Kaempfer's lifetime seem to have made little contemporary European culture) magic and impact. Yet it is perhaps these very works-his science commingled. The subjects covered Leiden doctoral dissertation (published 1694) include anatomy, medicine (materia medica, and his Amoenitatum exoticarum politico- general medicine, surgery and prophetic physico-medicarumfasiculi (1712)-which are medicine), cupping glasses, alchemical likely to interest modern scholars, in that they equipment, magic-medicinal bowls (including contain Kaempfer's sympathetic descriptions porcelain examples made in China with Arabic

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