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Book Reviews amount of information about what commitment to the ancient tradition, and contemporaries felt they knew and what resistance to such a radically new approach. they did in actual practice. The first two- The author's strict historical treatment of thirds of the book covers such topics as his subject would not have allowed him to remedies, diseases, healthy living, surgery speculate that traditional therapy might also and the knowledge, prevention and cure of have withstood change unless there had the plague. And through this Part I, Wear been a strikingly obvious improvement in addresses the similarities, differences, the results, something that did occur at that continuities and changes reflected in the time only in the application of Peruvian ideas and practices of learned physicians, bark to intermittent fevers. But that was empirics, lay people (to whom he pays then a herbal not chemical remedy, to which considerable attention) and those dismissed the Helmontians had no special claim. as quacks and mountebanks. This is a remarkably detailed account of Nor is the account merely descriptive; actual knowledge and practices. Some these views are also interpreted and readers will find it a bit repetitive, and analysed in the context of the political, maybe sometimes telling them more about a institutional, and intellectual circumstances subject than they want to know. But this of later sixteenth- and early seventeenth- was a risk that I believe Wear knowingly century England. But, unlike most recent took in order to furnish us with a subtle works on the medicine of this period, these and very rich account of what was actually larger dimensions of the story are not the going on, and I'm glad he did. focus but simply the framework within which the knowledge claims and practices Don Bates, are to be understood. McGill University Moreover, this provides a detailed background for Part II, which looks at the changes and continuities of the later seventeenth century in the face of the "new Saul Jarcho (trans. and ed.), The clinical science" of mechanics and experimentation, consultations of Francesco Torti, Malabar, accompanied by the decline of Galenism. As FL, published on behalf of the New York he has done before, Wear shows how these Academy of Medicine by Krieger, 2000, pp. changes had some minor impact on xxx, 911, illus., $125.00 (hardback 1-57524- practical medicine that was, in the main, 144-7). more rhetorical than actual. In the course of this transition, the Until his recent death, Saul Jarcho, "Helmontians" tried to bring about a more although for many years a practising radical change, not only in the discourse of physician, was a dedicated student of disease and treatment, but in actual medical history, particularly of matters practices. In place of the centuries-old Italian in the early modern period. His tradition of an "image of the body as translations of the letters of Morgagni and composed of a series of channels through other Italian doctors, remain invaluable which humours and morbific, putrid, ill scholarly tools. This translation of the matter travelled" (p. 407), and which had to consultation letters of Francesco Torti is be eradicated through bloodletting and assured of an equally warm and grateful purgation, they promoted more gentle, more reception. purified chemical medicines aimed at the Torti was born in Modena in 1658 and diseases themselves. However, by the end of studied medicine in Bologna. He became a the century this revolution had failed, professor in his native city alongside mostly, Wear argues, because of patient Bernardino Ramazzini. The 303 cases

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.40.139, on 28 Sep 2021 at 06:31:54, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300068988 Book Reviews collected here were written in Italian by Hippocrate, Epidemies V et VII, vol. 4, amanuenses and seem to have been pt 3, trans. Jacques Jouanna, annotations intended for publication. A further 26 by Jacques Jouanna and Mirko D Grmek, consultation letters are also included but Collection des Universites de France, Paris, these were seemingly confidential and not Les Belles Lettres, 2000, pp. cxlviii, 349, for publication. Most, but not all, of the FFr 460 (hardback 2-251-00490-4). cases begin with a letter of petition, a request for advice from a physician who The Bude Hippocrates continues to describes the case. Torti, of course, had not inform and enlighten students of ancient seen most of the sufferers. The patients medicine and of Greek. The latest volume, included many from the nobility, the clergy continuing an edition, translation, and and a number of nuns. A wide range of commentary on Epidemics 5 and 7, breaks illnesses was discussed: asthma, hysterical new ground in many ways. It is the first convulsions, palpitations, difficulty in edition to contain a full report of the swallowing and uterine sickness to name readings of all the major manuscripts, but the first five. although the gain for the text is less than in Torti was prolix but eschewed great previous volumes, since Wesley Smith's 1994 displays of learning. Hippocrates and Galen Loeb edition had already introduced many are called on occasionally, but interestingly necessary changes from the standard vulgate much more often Sydenham and Willis. of Littre. Jouanna offers a more disciplined There is plenty of evidence here that, when text and a more careful and more extensive the case seemed to merit it, Italian description of the manuscripts, as well as of physicians had no hesitation in palpating the complicated history of these notes as we their patients' abdomens. For example a have them. physician to a countess reported she had Epidemics 5 is a composite work, of at "obstructions in her pancreatic and least two authors. Cases 1-50 are by one mesenteric glands and vessels, which at physician, cases 51-106 by a second man, present can still be felt on palpation" writing between 358 and 348 BC. The latter (p. 427). Torti proclaimed he had little time block is repeated, with some, generally for theory. But of course all the theoretical slight, variations in Epidemics 7: language assumptions of the early modern physician and doctrine suggest that the author of are here: the importance of the constitution, these notes also wrote the notes in of temperament, humoral balance, regular Epidemics 7 that are not in Epidemics 5, evacuation and the centrality of diet for although, Jouanna argues, one cannot example. Torti was not afraid of drugs and conclude that the compiler of Epidemics 5 exotic polypharmacy. One recipe for copied directly from Epidemics 7 as we have arthritis required, amongst other things, them. Rather, in his view, both authors oats, China root, sarsaparilla, lobster tails copied the same set of case notes, produced and frog thighs boiled in a pullet's stomach by one of them, into their own collections (p. 293). Jarcho has provided a helpful at different times. Hence, rather than co- introduction to a valuable window into ordinate both collections, as Ermerins did, early modern social and medical life in to produce in both the exact wording of the Italy. It will remain as a longstanding original notes, Jouanna prefers to edit each monument to his memory. separately to give an idea of the state of the text of each collection. This is probably a sensible procedure, although it leads to Christopher Lawrence, considerable duplication. The Wellcome Trust Centre for the The second feature of importance is the History of Medicine at UCL discussion of the cases from a medical

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