571 Book Reviews

Book Reviews

situated within the Russian language materials Sigerist was a prolific letter-writer and – both contemporary and modern – and recipient of mail from all over the world. The contributes to a growing literature on the ways present volume reveals but one part of that in which Soviet policies compare to those of postbag. His correspondence contains not only Europe and to pre-revolutionary Russia (many quotidian concerns, but also shows the deep of these works also authored by graduates of structures being put in place as a discipline Columbia’s prolific and influential was shaped. The letters to the pathologist programme). Specialists in the history of William Welch, the neurosurgeon Harvey suicide, psychology, sociology, or forensic Cushing, and the military officer and librarian medicine will find much of comparative Fielding H. Garrison are, for the most part, interest in the history of these fields in the centred on organisational matters – Sigerist exotic, contested, and politically charged taking up the Hopkins chair, conference terrain of revolutionary and Stalinist Russia. arranging – and rarely revealing much of contemporary events, although in 1932 Tricia Starks, Cushing presciently observed, the ‘whole Orient seems to have gone mad, and the University of Arkansas Hawaiian Islands are near enough to feel the general uneasiness’ (p. 53). There is barely anything by way of tittle-tattle, indeed the Marcel H. Bickel (ed.), Henry E. Sigerist: formality of tone is striking – no first names, Correspondences with Welch, Cushing, ‘Dear Sigerist’, Cushing writes after Sigerist Garrison, and Ackerknecht (Bern: had stayed at the surgeon’s home ‘I sincerely Peter Lang, 2010) pp. 488, £57.40, hope that both Mrs Cushing and I paperback, ISBN: 978-3-0343-0320-0. will have an opportunity to meet [Mrs Sigerist]’ (p. 53). In 1932, Henry Sigerist (1891–1957) took up On the other hand, the letters to and from the position of chair and head of the brand Erwin Ackerknecht are eventually (especially new Institute for the History of Medicine at on the latter’s side) personal and richly Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. The revelatory of the medical historical culture of University’s medical school glittered with past the 1940s and 50s. Ackerknecht was born in and present clinicians – William Osler, Harvey Szczecin – then in Germany, now in Poland – Cushing – and Sigerist and his circle were to in 1906, and was a student of Sigerist’s in bring to Maryland equal lustre to their chosen Leipzig where he wrote a thesis (1932). A subject. To this day in the United States medical doctor he studied anthropology in Sigerist’s name illuminates the study of the France and left for the United States in 1941. history of medicine and, to a lesser degree, this Forthright in opinion, a polymath, polyglot is true of Britain, other English-speaking and voracious reader, Ackerknecht finally countries, then Germany, and finally anywhere gained a position at Wisconsin, but in the where the discipline has practitioners. This 1950s took up a permanent post in Zurich. His may seem an unnecessary prologue to a anthropological training left an intriguing hint review in a specialist journal but, conceivably, of the cultural relativism of the 1920s in his new readers and students on the margins may medical historical writing. Many of his letters not have encountered his presence. The to Sigerist are laments about his cultural concerns of Sigerist and his cohort still isolation and his love of Europe. reverberate: ambivalence towards doctors; The self-exiled and then communist within which faculty should history of Ackerknecht’s first few letters (in German) are medicine be sited in a university?; is the from Paris before the war. By 1939, he was subject humanities or social science?; what is increasingly desperate to escape France. After its relationship to the history of science? internment and various adventures, he reached

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Baltimore, and so letter writing ceases for anaesthetic was not always suitable and this three years as he and Sigerist were side-by- meant that the still-conscious patient could side. After this, the correspondence is hear pieces of his or her own ribs being thrown sometimes quite spicy, although this reader into an enamel bucket under the operating longs to know what is in the protected table’ (p. 60). Like many people with information censored in the letters as [XXX]. tuberculosis, Isabel experienced extremes of Various lasting and ephemeral historians of kindness and cruelty in an environment medicine pop in and out: Gregory Zilboorg, designed to bully patients into obedience and Owsei Temkin, George Rosen, Victor acceptance of a restricted life beyond the Robinson, Richard Shryock, for example. sanatorium walls. To this end, a certain Dr E Various German authors are identified by was fond of telling the young girls that Ackerknecht as former Nazi sympathisers. although they might look like rosy apples on Much light is shed on publishing medical the outside they were, nevertheless, rotten to history in these years. Apart from a slightly the core. It is fortunate that youth is invariably inconsistent and, for me at times, insufficiently optimistic, but from my own work with TB informative footnoting, this volume is a most- survivors, the wounded carry these poisoned welcome, carefully edited, searchlight on a barbs like shrapnel, into old age. discipline, and indeed a much wider world. This, then, is a multi-layered tale set in a marginalised community – a tale of Christopher Lawrence, personalities; friends made and lost; freezing, snow-covered beds in the name of ‘fresh air’ University College London treatment; balmy nights in three-sided wooden chalets under September stars; eggs boiled in jugs beneath running bath water; separation Isabel Gillard, Circe’s Island: A Young from lovers and children; interrupted Woman’s Memories of Tuberculosis education; tears, fears, pain and the inevitable Treatment in the 1950s (Glasgow: Unbound merry-go-round of emotions associated with Press, 2010), pp. 140, £7.99, paperback, ISBN: check-ups, X-rays, blood tests and 978-0-9558360-5-3. bronchoscopies. Isabel and her ward companions were undoubtedly luckier than Isabel Gillard was twenty and a literature most British sanatorium patients in being student at Edinburgh University when, in confined in the Royal Victoria Hospital, a 1950, she was hospitalised for over a year in pioneering institution founded at the turn of the city’s Royal Victoria Hospital for the twentieth century by Sir Robert Philip Tuberculosis. This is her personal recollection (1857–1939) who was studying in Koch’s of that time which she describes as ‘a Vienna laboratory at the time the TB bacillus determined hanging on, a waiting for an was discovered. The ‘Edinburgh System’ was upturn in fortune.’ adopted by local authorities in the UK when, By the early 1950s, tuberculosis in the in 1911, they took over responsibility for the Western world was theoretically coming under treatment of tuberculosis. But if some new control. Drug treatments such as streptomycin, treatment for TB appeared in the media, Philip PAS (para-aminosalicylic acid), and isoniazid (who became Professor of Tuberculosis at were widely available, although TB specialists Edinburgh University in 1919) always claimed were slow to relinquish the unpleasant that he was already using it in Edinburgh. As ‘technical’ procedures that kept patients Isabel was returning to her university studies, incarcerated in sanatoria and specialist (Sir) John Crofton (1912–2009), who has hospitals – artificial pneumothorax, phrenic written a foreword and appendix to this book, nerve crush, lobectomy, and thoracoplasty; ‘in was succeeding to the Edinburgh chair of the case of thoracoplasty operations, a general tuberculosis. It was Crofton and his colleagues

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