Medical History

AN N ALS OF MEDICAL HISTORY FRANCIS R' PACKARD 'M'D 'EDITOR [PHILADELPHIA] PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY PAUL - B - HOEBER 67-69 EAST FIFTY-NINTH STREET' NEW YORK CITY Entered as second class matter June 2 ,19 1 7 , at the post office at New York, N. Y ., under the Act of March 3 ,18 7 9 . Yearly Subscription $8.00. Single numbers J2.50. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I N U M BE R ONE The Scientific Position of Girolamo Fracastoro 1478?— 1553 with Especial Reference to the Source, Character and Influence of His Theory of Infection . C harles and D orothea Singer The Greek Cult of the Dead and the Chthonian Deities in Ancient Medicine F ielding H. G arrison The Three Characters of a Physician .... Enricus C ordus Voltaire’s Relation to M e d i c in e ...................................... P earce B ailey A n Unpublished Bronze Ecorche . ■ . , E dward Streeter Burke and Hare and the Psychology of Murder C harles W . B urr Hebrew Prayers for the Sick ...... C. D. S pivak Laryngology and Otology in Colonial Times . Stanton A . F riedberg N U M B E R TW O Eulogy of Dr. John Shaw Billings . A braham J acobi The Hygienic Idea and Its Manifestations in World History . K arl S udhoff A Patronal Festival for Thomas Willis (1621-1675) with Re marks b y Sir William Osier, Bart., f.r .s. H enry V iets Medicine and Mathematics in the Sixteenth Century D avid E ugene Smith Historical Development of our Knowledge of the Circulation and Its Disorders ........ P hilip S. R oy The Jetons of the Old Paris Academy of Medicine in the Numismatic Collection in the Army Medical Museum at Washington . A lbert A lleman The History of In fectio n ......................................................... A rnold C. K lebs Text of William Shippen’s First Draft of a Plan for the Organ isation of the Military Hospital During the Revolution . The Beginnings of Intravenous Medication . H orace M anchester B rown The Legislative and Administrative History of the Medical Department of the United States Army During the Rev olutionary Period (1776-1786) . W illiam O. O wen NUMBER THREE Figurations of Skeletal and Visceral Anatomy in the Books of Hours . W ilfrid M. de V oynich and F ielding H. G arrison Babylonian-Assyrian Medicine . M orris J astrow , Jr. On a Greek Charm Used in England in the Twelfth Century . C harles Singer Military Sanitation in the 16th, 17th and 18th Centuries C harles L. H eizmann A Check List of Medical Incunabula in the Surgeon-General’s Library NUMBER FOUR The First Printed Documents Relating to Modern Surgical Anaesthesia . W illiam O sler Byzantine Medical Fragments . ..... C harles S inger The New York Medical College 1782-1906 . A braham J acobi Studies in Paleopathology. I. Consideration of Evidences of Pathological Conditions Found Among Fossil Animals . R oy L. M oodie Plague Tractates .... D orothea W aley Singer and R euben L evy The Medical Phrases of Victor Hugo . H ubert A shley R oyster ANNALS OF MEDICAL HISTORY V olume u F all 1919 N umber 3 ANCIENT POEMS ON INFANT HYGIENE By JOHN FOOTE, M.D. WASHINGTON, D. C. IDACTIC poetry, per a revival of the study and imitation of haps one of the earliest the ancient poems in European countries forms of verse, has be which influenced writers for at least two come a rarity in mod centuries. Indeed much didacticism is ern times, esteemed found in late eighteenth-century poetry; chiefly as a curiosity Pope was essentially a didactic poet. of literature. Indeed, Like some primitive civilized peoples who some critics are posi put all their knowledge into verse, so that tive that the words didactic and poetry their learned men forgot nothing old yet are of themselves so incompatible that originated nothing, these later didactic poets no real poetry can be didactic. And forgot little of the ancient learning, good or yet, Hesiod, that shadowy rhymester, who bad, and in their passion for precedent seems as composite an individual as Homer learned little that was new. Their scope was himself, wrote the first didactic poems of wide and versatile—they instructed the which fragments have come down to us, public in philosophy, astronomy, agricul and the elegant Aratus and Lucretius ture, religion and especially in medicine. and Virgil followed in the footsteps of Nauseous as the remedies of that day cer the rustic singers of ancient Greece. This tainly were, the prescriptions were sweet could not fail to impress and influence ened and sugared with rhyme, so that no those students who in later days read Greek patient with a soul attuned to verse could and Roman literature. So it was that the well refuse them. There is, for example, the intensive study of the old languages and very ancient regimen of health of the the classical authors which came with University of Salerno, claimed by some to the “ revival of learning,” and the prac be as old as that venerable shrine of learn tice of writing Latin verses which was a ing itself—and conservatively placed as fashionable affectation of erudition in early as the thirteenth century—the equiv the Renaissance period and later, caused alent of our modern books on personal 213 214 Annals of Medical History hygiene. It is a little difficult to realize that either of these translations appeared, Dr. people were interested in hygiene in that Hugh Downman, an English physician who remote period—yet here is the proof. dabbled in classic literature, wrote a didactic The eighteenth century witnessed a per poem in his native tongue called “ Infancy, fect flood of medical didactic verse, some or the Management of Children,”3 which of the type of Garth’s “ The Dispensary,” a went into seven editions. As a historical poem which endeavored to reduce the ex source it has little value as compared with cessive charges of the apothecary—a very the translations by Roscoe and Tytler, serious evil in that day. Not only were many though it is probable that its publication English medical poems written at that time, may have stimulated interest in the foreign but a fairly large number were translated literature on the same subject. Throughout from other languages into English. the six books the author seems more con We are learning slowly enough that there cerned with airing his classic lore than is nothing very new under the sun, but we anything else, and the anxious mother always mentally reserve certain ideas of the would have a difficult time to remember his present day which are so peculiarly identi florid axioms, excellent though they were. fied in our minds with modern thought and Both Tansillo and St. Marthe expressed modern progress as to constitute in them themselves both more succinctly and more selves a landmark between old times and wisely than Dr. Downman—because they modern days. One of these is the idea of really wrote for the mothers of their day. educational propaganda by means of books “ Infancy” deals with breast feeding, acces and pamphlets to prevent infant mortality. sory feeding, weaning, diet for older chil Because of this it will come as something of dren, clothing and bathing, walking and a surprise to learn that in the didactic exercise, and the simpler ailments. poetry of the eighteenth century at least In the sixth book Dr. Downman pays a two such treatises were translated into tribute to Lady Mary Montagu, and English from foreign languages—one, “ The credits her with having established the prac Nurse,” 1 by Tansillo, from the Italian by tice of inoculation to prevent smallpox. Roscoe; the other, “ Psedotrophia, or the As this work was published in 1776, it pre Feeding and Uprearing of Children,” 2 by cedes Jenner’s publication of vaccination by St. Marthe, a French writer of Latin verse, many years. Though the poet says inocula translated by H. W. Tytler, M.D. “ The tion has “ saved thousands,” he details no Nurse” was printed in London in 1798 and personal experiences with it. reprinted in New York in 1800, while St. She hath been the cause Marthe’s poem was translated from the Of heartfelt joy to thousands; thousands live Latin into French, exhausted ten editions in And still shall live through her. its native tongue and was given two separate Yet Downman corroborates the state English translations, the last published in ment of Klebs and others that inoculation London in 1797. against smallpox was widely used in Eng In 1776, more than two decades before land before vaccination was shown to be of greater value. There are so many apos 1 Luigo Tansillo: “ The Nurse,” translated from trophes to eminent physicians—Armstrong the Italian by William Roscoe, Liverpool. London: and Garth (the medical poets), Cullen, 1798. 2 “ Paedotrophia; or, the Art of Nursing and Rear Hunter, Mead, Hewson, Codrington and ing Children,” translated from the Latin of Scevole 3 “ Infancy, or the Management of Children,” by de St. Marthe by H. W. Tytler, M.D. London: Hugh Downman. Exeter: Trewman & Son, 1803. 1797. 6th ed. A n c ien t Poems on In fan t H y g ie n e 215 many others, to say nothing of long and the removal of the ban on his writings. intimate talks with Fame, Duty, Affection, Whatever may have been the influence "of Habit and many other qualities, virtues and this appeal Tansillo’s works were not for vices, that the more one reads the more he bidden in the next edition of the “ Index.” ^ is convinced that Downman was writing up Besides “ The Nurse,” Tansillo wrote to his literary and medical friends rather some comedies and a long didactic poem than down to the uninformed, or at least “ II Podere”—“ The Country House.” His uninstructed mother of his day.

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