Dates in Medicine. A chronological record of medical progress over three millennia Ed Anton Sebastian

Parthenon Publishing, 35 [pounds sterling], pp 435 ISBN 1 85070 095

Rating: 0

Quite apart from the Millennium Dome, our daft obsession with a date containing three zeros has a lot to answer for–including these two books, which have been “inspired” by the millennium. The Medical Millennium consists of 1000 names in alphabetical order from Peter of Abano (1250-1316) to Yvunge Zotterman (1898-1982), who wrote an autobiography called Touch, Tickle and Pain. For each name, dates of birth and death are given, followed by a potted biography of 20-30 words. Having to find 1000 names has led to there being some unlikely people included, and the book would have been much better with fewer names and longer entries. However, most of the entries are sensibly written, and there seem to be few mistakes–apart from James Harvey for William Harvey in the foreword, which was presumably just a slip of the pen.

Neither of these books can possibly give any sense of historical change if read through from beginning to end. They can be judged only as works of reference. If you want a very brief guide to the great and the good in medicine, Lee’s book will do.
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Sebastian’s book (which, in spite of the subtitle, starts in 8000 BC) is another matter. It contains about 6000 entries, each of about 30 words, arranged in chronological order. You would think that the compiler of this enormous list would have entered people by the year or years in which their observation or discovery was made. Instead, most are entered simply by their date of birth. Semmelweis, for instance, is associated with 1847, the year when he introduced antisepsis by chlorine washings to prevent puerperal fever. Here, the sole entry for Semmelweis comes at his date of birth, 1818, where he is incorrectly said to have introduced asepsis when “doctors washed their hands” Lister introduced surgical antisepsis in the 1860s, but you will find nothing about him or his work unless you know that he was born in 1827. If you had made an important medical discovery in 1970 when you were 40 years old, would you have been surprised to see that this was entered in 1930? I would, and Sir David Weatherall may well be surprised to find himself included in this chronology in 1933, when he was born.

This system means that it is impossible to scan any historical period to learn what was going on in medicine. To make matters worse, the system is inconsistent. Edward Jenner is entered at 1796, the year when he first performed vaccination. Waksman, who discovered streptomycin, is entered at 1952, when he received the Nobel prize. William Harvey is entered three times–once for his date of birth and twice more for the dates of publication of his two famous treatises, leading to repetition. Alexander Fleming appears twice–once for his date of birth 1881 and again with the discovery of penicillin, which is given as 1928 in one entry and 1929 in the other.

Any reference work such as a chronology must be easy to use and as accurate as possible. This book is not only extremely difficult to use but contains many errors and anachronisms as well as trivial entries. What, for example, is one to make of an entry in 1647 recording the birth of Denis Papin, who apparently invented a steam digester to dissolve bones, or Gustav Michaelis (born 1798), who “described the diamond-shaped area over the aspect of the pelvis bounded by the dimples of the posterior iliac spines”? Most of the errors might be considered minor, but there are enough to destroy confidence. A pneumonectomy was not performed in 1951 on King George IV. Wrong king. It was the Royal College of Surgeons of London, not England, that was founded in 1800, and not, as given here, in 1799. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is entered at 1937, when it received its Royal Charter, but the date when it was founded (1929) is not included. The first endowed chair in anaesthesiology in the world was not at Harvard in 1941 but at Oxford in 1936. This is only a small sample of errors, but the eccentric and inconsistent way in which this chronology was constructed means it cannot be recommended.

Ratings are on a 4 star scale, 4=excellent

Irvine Loudon medical historian, Wantage

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