A History of Medical Psychology by Gregory ZilboorgReview by: M. F. Ashley MontaguIsis, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Autumn, 1942), pp. 189-190Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/226238 .

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Reviews

experience.) But these are just the sort of questions which can ultimately be answered only by specific research in the field, and the one brief quotation from Dr. HARLEY'S book indicates what might be accomplished in this way.

Dr. HARLEY'S book is rich in materials which will be of great interest to the student of nascent science, for he deals with every aspect of medicine and its relation to magic, sorcery, divination, and certain societies secret and otherwise. A valuable supplementary chapter discusses "Native medical practice in Africa as a whole," and in an Appendix "Excerpts from the literature on African medicine" are given. A "Botanical list of plants mentioned in the text" with their native names follows. There is a bibliography and an index.

M. F. ASHLEY MONTAGU

GREGORY ZILBOORG: A History of Medical Psy- chology. Pp. 606. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 1941. $5.00.

A history of any subject should be an account of facts or events significantly related to the de- velopment of that subject, in the order in which they happened, together with an account of their causes and effects, with due regard to the frame- work of the culture of which they were a part. These, it seems to me, are the minimum require- ments for any history. Catalogues of facts, or events, presented in historical order do not con- stitute a history. History is multidimensional, and the temporal dimension is but an irreversible con- tinuum whose only influence upon the course of events is to render them irreversible. The most significant dimension is, of course, the cultural one, and all histories of human events can be signifi- cantly written only in terms of the cultural dimen- sion. The history of science is but the history of one aspect of culture, of a culture from which it can never be divorced. Occasionally, but only occa- sionally, historical catalogues are not only to be welcomed but are to be encouraged. This is espe- cially the case where a very large and complicated field is dealt with. When such a work also happens to be a pioneer attempt to open up the field, we can be nothing but grateful.

Dr. ZILBOORG'S book represents such a pioneer attempt, and students of the history of science in all its branches would be hard put to it to think of a field more difficult to treat historically, with all our minimum requirements satisfied, than medical psychology. Yet ZILBOORG has done his best to meet these requirements. The complexity of the subject is so great that any attempt to present it at all adequately would, from the viewpoint of the his- torian of science, require at least half a lifetime and several volumes far larger than the present one. Short of this ZILBOORG has given us a very readable

survey of the subject, in which a large proportion of the outstanding figures of all times, together with their achievements, are interestingly pre- sented.

As ZILBOORG points out, "The history of psy- chiatry is essentially the history of humanism. Every time humanism has diminished or degen- erated into mere philanthropic sentimentality, psy- chiatry has entered a new ebb. Every time the spirit of humanism has arisen, a new contribution to psychiatry has been made." One of the great merits of the book is the clarity with which this fact is brought out. Another of the merits of the book lies in the excellent account which ZILBOORG gives of the work of such men as PARACELSUS, AGRIPPA, WEYER, VIVES, and numerous others.

Evidences of haste and of superficial reading are not wanting. There are many unexpected, and some expected, omissions; and it were, perhaps, a quibble to suggest that the volume had been more accurately called a survey rather than a history. Dr. ZILBOORG, a busy psychiatrist, has obviously worked long and hard at this volume, in the writing of which he has had the collaboration of Dr. GEORGE W. HENRY. It need hardly be said that the authors could not have mentioned, nor yet dis- cussed, everyone who in any way contributed to the development of medical psychology, but the fact is that they have mentioned-almost exclu- sively-the best known contributors to the field, the men whose names one could extract from the index of a good history of medicine. I think at random of EDWARD .TYSON, and RICHARD HALE, both of whom in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries made contributions of fundamental im- portance to the art of the care and cure of the mentally sick, and both of whom were at Beth- lehem. Long before PINEL came upon the scene these men had instituted revolutionary reforms in the practice of medical psychology. Since O'DONOGHUE's book on Bethlehem is mentioned by Dr. HENRY it is difficult to understand why Dr. ZILBOORG missed the more than broad hints con- tained in that volume, hints which might have led him to a first-class discovery.

Almost at the beginning of his text ZILBOORG starts off with what, coming from a psychiatrist, seems like a most astonishing judgment. Because AMBROISE PARE believed in witches and was also a great surgeon, ZILBOORG remarks "We thus have two different presences of AMBROISE PARE': one a scientific, benevolent court doctor of the sixteenth century and the other an obscurantist, an intolerant and heartless courtier . . ." (pp. 18-19). Surely this represents a gross misunderstanding both of the character of the man and of the significance of his beliefs for the age in which he lived? A century later Sir THOMAS BROWNE could solemnly avow his belief in witches, and yet be one of the most humane

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190 Reviews

and tolerant of men. Why not PARE a century earlier?

In his discussion of the primitive attitude towards disease, ZILBOORG falls into the usual error of assuming that it is not based "on the intellectual synthesis of observations." His brief picture of primitive man leaves much to be desired.

The statement that "GALEN had to limit himself to the dissection of pigs. He could not dissect even apes," is quite incorrect. GALEN dissected monkeys and baboons as well as pigs (See De nat. Ad- ministr. lib. 1, cap. 2).

The references to the learned societies are some- what careless. NEWTON was not an original Fellow of the Royal Society, as is stated on p. 248. He was elected in 1671. Completely erroneous is the statement that "the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society began to be published in 1664, the Journal des Savants the following year" (p. 248). Actually both journals were published in the same year, publication of the first issue of the Journal des SCavans on the 5th of January 1665 preceding by ten weeks the first issue of the Philosophical Transactions which was published 6/16 March 1664/65.

The references to THOMAS WILLIS, while recog- nizing his importance, do not successfully convey a proper estimate of his originality and of the in- fluence of his work, while the treatise on which his

principal claim to fame rests is referred to as Opera Omnia, and the date of publication given as 1681. In the first place, the work which ZILBOORG here has in mind is WILLIS' De Anima Brutorum, published at Oxford in 1672. In the second place, WILLIS' Opera Omnia was published in 1680 at Geneva, and in another edition in 1682 at Amsterdam. Finally, a collected edition of WILLIS was pub- lished in 1681, but this was in English! WILLIS' fundamental works published between 1659 and 1674 should, at the least, have been noted.

Dr. HENRY'S section on the history of organic mental diseases (pp. 526-557) is but the briefest of most inadequate sketches. The section on mental hospitals, by the same author (pp. 558-589), is much better, although far from adequate. There is a good index. There are some 21 illustrations, rather incongruously scattered through the volume.

The virtues of this volume far outweigh any faults which it may have, and Dr. ZILBOORG and his collaborator Dr. HENRY are to be congratulated upon bringing this work before the public in so readable a form. All future students of the history of medical psychology or its annectent branches will lean heavily upon their work.

M. F. AsHLEY MONTAGU

Department of Anatomy Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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