Incunabula Medica: a Study of the Earliest Thought It Worth While to Have Printed,” and Printed Medical Books (1467-1480)
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BOOK REVIEWS Incunabula Medica: A Study of the Earliest thought it worth while to have printed,” and Printed Medical Books (1467-1480). By Sir William goes on to demonstrate how the Arabic influence Osler, m.d., Oxford University Press, 1923. after having overshadowed for some centuries For many years Sir William Osler labored the Greek, had been completely overthrown as incessantly towards the compilation of a com shown by the comparatively large number of plete bibliography of medical incunabula, urging the Arabian authors whose books were printed that all institutions or individuals owning such at the commencement of the art, only to be works should publish lists of them, and emphasiz outnumbered by the Greeks a few decades later ing on all occasions the great importance to when the writing of Hippocrates became easier medical historians and bibliographers of an of access. Then follows a delightful resume of accurate, and as extensive as possible, census our knowledge of purgation and bleeding of all early printed medical books. The volume calendars and other medical broadsides. These under review is based on his presidential address are not included in the bibliographical list as to the Bibliographical Society in 1914. they are considered as having been adequately It had been Sir William’s intention to expand described by others. his address very considerably and to append Osler considers as incunabula only books to it a bibliography compiled by Mr. Scholderer. printed before the close of 1480, not projecting The onset of the War with its overwhelming the date as far as 1500, as Hain and some other burdens rendered it impossible for him to finish bibliographers have done. He studies 182 editions the work. In an interesting Preface, the manner of medical work representing sixty-seven authors. in which the book has been brought to comple In the Bibliographical List the number has been tion is briefly stated as follows: increased to 217. The discussion of the authors and their books is most charming, sparkling In the scanty leisure he^could spare to it Sir with those wonderful touches of humor which William Osler had rewritten the earlier part of his Osler alone could impart to such a catalogue Address, and put together the variant section which is raisonne. In a brief Appendix is a most valuable printed as an Appendix. As noted above, he had description of some of the most important early never seen Mr. Scholderer’s bibliography save in specimens, and the task of preparing his Address for “Synonyma, Dictionaries, Pandects, and printing has not been easy, written as it was from Antidotaria.” memoranda of various degrees of bibliographical The Descriptive List of Medical Books authority, and never revised by its author. A natural printed before 1481, which occupies the next disinclination to alter one word of the writing of so section, is invaluable. It fully answers Sir great a master had to be qualified by assurance that William’s ardent wish and we can imagine the Osler himself cared keenly “to get things right,” and pleasure it must have given him to feel that it with the united work of Dr. Malloch and Dr. was really under way. At the end of the volume Francis on the medical side and Mr. Scholderer on are some most excellent facsimiles of interesting the typographical, such editing as was needed has pages from incunabula. It is most unfortunate been supplied. It should be needless to say that that this beautiful publication of the Biblio nothing has been added; and the fact that the graphical Society is privately printed and Address has been expanded in some places and not in others leaves it as only a slightly revised draft of therefore not available to many who would what Osler meantJt toj?e. wish to possess it, not only for the pleasure of reading and re-reading it, but as a valuable work The Address is written in Osier’s best form. of reference. He' begins by a most successful effort “to indi The Society is to be congratulated on the cate the influence which the introduction of printing of such an appropriate memorial to printing had upon medicine, to get, if possible, one who would undoubtedly have appreciated it a mental picture of professors and practice at more than most. the time from the characters of books they Francis R. Packard, m.d..