The History of Paediatrics: The Progress of the Study of Diseases of Children up to the End of the XVIIIth Century, by George Frederic Still, M.D. London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1965, 526 pp., 5.10.0 ($15.50)
Samuel X. Radbill M.D.
First published in 1931 as an enlargement upon the Fitzpatrick lectures which were given a few years earlier at the Royal College of Physicians in London, the original edition of this book had become a rarity thanks to Hitler's bombers which destroyed all but about 800 copies. Now this facsimile reprint will meet an eager welcome. It complements Ruhräh's Pediatrics of the Past, which Still, in his preface, described as so "masterly and delightful an anthology." Using the biographical method, the growth of medical interest in children is traced chronologically from Hippocrates to Jenner, a period from about 400 B.C. to 1800 A.D. An appendix listing pediatric inaugural dissertations written between the years 1573 and 1799 and another listing minor writings, dissertations, and pamphlets from 1729 to 1797, as well as an index of names and subjects, add to the usefulness of the book.
George Frederic Still (1868-1941), whose last name is the eponym for juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (the theme of his graduation thesis in 1897), was one of the first in England to devote himself to pediatrics as a modem specialty. He was the first professor of diseases of children in King's College, London, and the author of many important pediatric papers, as well as several books among which is his popular and beautifully written textbook on Common Disorders and Diseases of Children. But his most enduring gift to mankind is this remarkably accurate and scholarly study of the history of pediatrics. This reprint is a photocopy of the original.
Nothing but the name of the publisher on the title page has been altered, which will prove a boon to true scholars even though it stops short of the nineteenth and twentieth cunturies.
