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Book Review
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Medicine in Quotations: Views of Health and Disease Through
the Ages, 2nd edition. Edited by Edward J. Huth and T.
Jock Murray. (American College of Physicians, Philadelphia, 2006,
ISBN 1-930513-67-4). 581 pp + xvi.
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'Much
of the pleasure of life,' said my old anatomy professor, 'comes
from the filling and emptying of hollow viscera.' Was Graeme Schofield
the first to utter this neurophysiological truth? I can't be absolutely
sure (neither, forty years later, can he), but it was certainly
memorable and started a life-long interest in medical quotations.
I therefore took up Medicine in Quotations with an expectation
of much enjoyment, an expectation which was indeed met.
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1
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The first edition of this book, now
a standard work, was published in 2000 and contained 3099 quotes.
The second has about 450 more, allowing for the inclusion of recent
or overlooked material. This is part of an ongoing search, and the
editors solicit quotations for a third edition.1 They modestly add
the proviso 'in the event that it is called for,' but they can be
reassured on this point. The quotations are of several types—normal
human states and milestones; descriptions of disease, their discovery
and investigation; and the perceptions of doctors, nurses, and patients
of these diseases and of each other.
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2
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Comparison
will be made with Strauss's Familiar Medical Quotations,
which appeared in 1968.2 It is also organised thematically, rather
than by author. Edward J. Huth, one of the editors of the present
publication, was on the advisory board of the earlier one. It is
quite clear that the books are, and were always meant to be, complementary
volumes. The earlier volume contains about twice the number of medical
quotations as the later one, which has more emphasis on the original
description of disease and quotations from the 1970s onwards. Voltaire
was cited seventeen times by Strauss, but only once by Huth and
Murray. It is important for librarians to realise this, to avoid
the trap of discarding the old when the new appears.
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3
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It is always more difficult for the
editors of a dictionary of quotations to decide what is to be left
out, rather than what is to be put in. Historians may find it a
pity that some quotations are linked only to secondary sources,
and that all non-English quotes are given only in translation. The
original will nearly always be listed in Garrison and Morton's book,
however, to which the editors refer.3 The 'Notes to Readers' chapter
addresses these and other problems.
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4
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Any
quibbles are minor and deal with style rather than content. It has
been decided to follow the modern habit of doing away with the possessive
case when using eponyms—Paget Disease rather than Paget's
Disease, for example. I can see the reason behind this—to
try to emphasise that osteitis deformans is the disease Paget
described, rather than the one from which he suffered—but
I still find it jarringly ungrammatical. Secondly, the book could
do with some cross-referencing. For example, John Stone's quote
about interns needing the heart of a lion, the eye of an eagle,
and the hand of a woman is so clearly derived from John Halle's
quote about the properties required by a successful surgeon, half
a book away, that the reader should have been told. Parenthetically,
Richard Gordon, in yet another quote, has a medical student add
a fourth desideratum: 'the commercial morals of a Levantine usurer.' |
5 |
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The
function of the book is to provide a ready reference for medical
professionals (rather than the general public) which is comprehensive
and interesting. All of us will find some old favourites and lots
of new ones. There are fourteen citations of Croatian proverbs sprinkled
through the book, for example, none of which I had encountered before.
These are great for speeches. Others, such as Whitby's description
of the activity of 2-(p-aminobenzene sulphonamide) pyridine
against pneumococci of types I, II, III, V, VII and VIII, provide
interesting and useful information, but can hardly be dropped into
general conversation. |
6 |
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The
current enthusiasm for evidence-based medicine made me look for
Archie Cochrane. He is cited a dozen times, my favourite being his
observation that scientific writing may be precise, but unreadable.
Writing is not always this way, however, and Medicine in Quotations
provides many examples. Clifford Allbutt, who is cited ten times,
larded his scientific writing with riveting images. I read somewhere
his description of a workman's cottage as being 'damp enough to
give rheumatism to a wild duck.' Can't you just feel it in your
bones? |
7 |
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The
important thing in a profession such as medicine is to see oneself
not as an isolated event, but as part of a continuum. Collections
like this one are helpful in that process, and it will probably
be used more for browsing than for looking up a specific quotation.
It is to be dipped into during those stolen minutes, or at the end
of a busy day, with the certainty that every page will yield points
of interest or delight. |
8 |
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I started this review on a personal note; allow me also to finish
on one. Harold Attwood (who was the inaugural secretary of this Society, and
its second president) told me that he had been a student in Willie Tulloch's
Department of Bacteriology at the University of St Andrews. Tulloch had just
conducted an official inquiry into food production and summed up his studies
in one pithy sentence: 'Milk is bottled sewage; claret is bottled sunshine.'
And what better way is there to enjoy the sunshine than in the company of
this marvellous book?
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1. Quotations can be submitted
to http://www.acponline.org/medquotes/quotations.htm.
2. Maurice B. Strauss, ed., Familiar
Medical Quotations
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1968).
3. Jeremy M. Norman, ed., Morton's
Medical Bibliography: An Annotated Check-list of Texts Illustrating the History
of Medicine (Garrison and Morton), 5th edition
(Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1991)
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