Book Reviews William Croone, On the reason of the
movementof the muscles, translation by Paul Maquet,Introduction by MargaretNayler, Transactionsof theAmericanPhilosophical Society,vol. 90,Pt1,Philadelphia, American Philosophical Society, 2000,pp. 130,$20.00 (0-87169-901-X).
This is theproduct ofawell-matched alliance:atranslator(with his reviser), andan editor who hassetthe workin context. Croonewrotein sensibleworkadayLatin of histime, the long shadow of Cicero's long periodicsentencesbeing by then much dimmed. Theexcellenttranslation is in carefulworkadayEnglish of today.Asingle cavil:Idonotthink that Croone's word "autopsy" (in Greek)canbe rendered nowadays by theword "autopsy",asthe translator has done. AsCastelli'sdictionary confirms, itmeantfor Croone(and long before and afterwardstoo) "actualvisual inspection".But nowinBritain, accordingto Chambers'dictionary, the meaning is restrictedtotheexamination ofacorpsebya pathologist, the wider meaninghaving become obsolete.Inthe UnitedStates, Merriam-Webster doesnotmention that restriction, butnolonger includes the "visual" elementas necessaryinthe meaning.
The editorhas undertaken her task with careandscholarship,teasingoutCroone's inheritance and hislegacy.Croonecould discern with remarkablepenetrationsome aspectsof how muscles work andare controlled. Thebeliefof histime thatmuscle volumeincreased(even ifonly minimally) when the musclecontracted ledhimto create animpressive geometric model, andtotake partinexperimentstoshow that inflation of abladdercould createsubstantiallifting forces. His concisereasoning carriesrespect whetheritturnedoutwell-founded lateror not.Andhe must have beenphysicallyfittoo: "I haveeasily maintained,lifted up from the ground, a weight ofeightypounds attached tothe tendon of the muscle...the other extremityofthe musclebeingheld inmy hand. I have no doubt that I should have
supportedamuch heavier weight, ifonehad beenathand" (p. 81).
The reproduction of the Latintextis regrettable.It relapsesrepeatedly into illegibility. Therepresentationof the title pageof Croone's workhere, with large inexplicable blots and barely legible characters,canbecompared with the model clarity of thatinSelected readingsinthe historyofphysiology (JohnFFulton, completed by Leonard G Wilson, 2nd ed., Springfield, Illinois, 1966, plate42;plate41is aniceportrait ofCroone).Ifadequate photocopyingcannotbeprovidedfor some reason,thereis another option:afaithful transcript of the original, the time-honoured procedureofLoebeditionsof the classics, which do not of course start from a printed original. Suchatranscript,onceprepared, has theadded advantage of being easily searched andstyled.
Croone refers (p. 119)tothephenomenon ofsneezingin response tosunlight (or indeed otherbright lights).Itisinherited, and found inaboutone infour of the population(J M Forrester,'Sneezingon exposure tobright lightas aninheritedresponse',Hum.Hered 1985,35: 113-14).Croone's reference is evidently the earliestyetnoted;nonebefore lastcenturyismentioned ina recentreview (BradleyWWhitman andRoger JPacker, 'Thephoticsneezereflex:literature review anddiscussion', Neurology1993, 43: 868-71), although it would hardly be surprising if someone were tounearthan accountin,say, Pliny.
John MForrester, Edinburgh
MassimoGaluzzi, GianniMicheli and Maria-Teresa Monti(eds), Le formedella comunicazionescientifica, Milan,
Francoangeli, 1998, pp. 438, L. 57,000 (88-464-0924-8).
This book on the forms of scientific communication demonstrates that certain 429
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Book Reviews Italianhistorians are up-to-date with
epistemological topics. Thevolumecontains twentypapers and is divided into three parts: antiquity and the MiddleAges,the physico-mathematical sciences, and the life sciences. I shall briefly review that related to medical andlife science,namely the third part. Inthe firsttwo,historians will find muchinteresting information on communication inAristotle,Agricola, Renaissance Italian philosophersand alchemists, Huygens, Stahl, Newton and others.
Therangeis wide witha topic suchas communication, and Ishall proceed chronologically, beginning withtwopapers concerning antiquity and themedieval period. Ivan Garofaloaddresses stylistic variations in Galen'sanatomyandfurther Galenism, and discusses the interesting problem, forantiquity, of oralversus writtenmedical teaching. Canwriting substitute forpractice? and, ifso, to what extent?Thesequestions areexamined especially through Galen's osteology. In a paper onArnald ofVilanova, JoleAgrimi exposesthe variousaspectsof Vilanova's favourite formof communication-aphorisms, parabolas andexamples-and argues that thesuccessofVilanova'smodel wasduemainlytohisembodying the generaland abstractrules learnedat university in a morepracticalsetofrules, sothathis methodserved as amodel for teaching medical knowledge for200 years. Thescholastic crisis of medicineduring the Renaissance, characterized by the searchfor empirical and didacticmethods, continued to useVilanova's modelofcommunicating scholarlyknowledgethroughaphorisms.
On Renaissance anatomy, following the trend of studies on the public sphere and anatomy, Nancy Siraisi discusses contexts and social values stemming from reports of two late-fifteenth-century Italian autopsies. She establishes that reports on and interpretations ofautopsy were determined by reasons other than medical. Indeed religious motivation was among
the most important; because, for instance, autopsies could lead to greater devotion. In one case, the autopsy was carried out to support a trial of canonization, a far from usual medical practice. The public expected supernatural evidence to be revealed by the knife of the surgeon, while physicians read such proofs with a physiological key. The seventeenth century is represented by a paper from Guido Giglioni on Swammerdam. Following a topic opened by Edward Ruestow on the visual obstacles of microscopical
investigation, Giglioni reconsiders Swammerdam's relation to images and communication of observation, to visual and rhetorical culture. How do images communicate, and what do they communicate? In what way do images help understanding and repeating observations?
Marino Buscaglia, Walter Bernardi, and Maria-Teresa Monti each examine eighteenth-century physiological and naturalistic works, on Abraham Trembley, Lazzaro Spallanzani and Albrecht von Haller. A classic topic, at least for Italian historians, is presented by Bernardi. Between 1761 and 1765 Spallanzani changed from an epigenetist to a preformationist point of view. It is a matter ofdispute whether this change was determined by his experimental procedures or by a strategy that would bring Spallanzani closer to famous
preformationists such as Charles Bonnet. Through examination of the
correspondence ofseveral people, Bernardi decides in favour of the latter, a position already defended long ago by Giuliano Pancaldi. By contrast to this classic study on Spallanzani, the two other papers examine more closely the issue of communication. Indeed, is communication the message by which knowledge is transmitted, or is it the medium? These questions are dealt with in Marino Buscaglia's paper on Trembley, and especially in Maria-Teresa Monti's, which 430
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BookReviews compares the journals of experiments of
Spallanzani and Haller to published results. I will not expand on Buscaglia's essay, in which the now familiar path of investigation on the rhetoric ofexperiment is pursued. How iconography complements a text, how publishing can influence one's understanding of previous laboratory research, are issues tackled there and investigated through Trembley's
astonishing 1744 Memoires on fresh-water polyps.
Maria-Teresa Monti's is, in my view, the most impressive paper. Indeed, no one before, to my knowledge, has used the methodology ofcomparing a laboratory journal to published work for a stylistic comparison of two authors. Monti's analysis ofHaller's embryological works and Spallanzani's essay on regeneration reveals the ways in which various forms ofwriting shape the forms of
communication, as well as the changes in scientific opinions ofthe scholars. Interaction between many levels of the agonistic field, and particularly between forms and contents, shows that the way ofwriting can influence the way of thinking. In such a study, laboratory journals are concerned with both experiments on animals and experiments with communication. I would especially draw attention to Monti's acknowledgment ofself-conviction, in Spallanzani, as a process close to communication. An illuminating outcome ofMonti's-and other papers-is that if the comparison of twojournals shows so many differences in style, communication, self-conviction, forms ofwriting, types ofinfluence, how can broad generalizations such as Woolgar and Latour's stochastic model of
construction of experimental protocols be maintained?
Thiscollection shows acombinationof twoconcepts-at least-ofthe formof communication. The first relates to a classic methodology, looking forthepublicto whom a work isaddressed, and
reconstructing, through analysisofcertain texts and theirreception,the strategiesused to reach suchagoal.A second emergesin certainstudies, particularlyin Monti's. In
addition,
she aimsatunderstandinghow strategies areelaboratedduringthewriting process,inthecourse ofpractice, during reading,re-reading and re-writing. As aconsequence, thequestionis notwhat is the strategy,but how could this strategy be elaborated, andaccordingto whatfactors. Whileinthe former, theforms of
communication aretreated asifdiscovered, or revealed,in thelatter, theyare
definitely
constructed.
MarcJRatciff, Institut Louis Jeantet d'Histoirede laMedecine, Geneva
Stephen Porter, The greatplague,Thrupp, SuttonPublishing, 1999, pp.ix, 213,illus., £20.00, $34.95 (hardback 0-7509-1615-X).
From the sixth and seventh centuries CE until thefourteenth, plagueepidemics did not occurinEurope, but from the Black Death of the 1340s until theearly eighteenthcentury,Europe seldom experienced thirtyyearswithout an
outbreak ofaplague epidemic somewhere. Thenplague, in itsmeaningofhuman infection with the bacillus Yersiniapestis, disappearedin Europe. No one knowswhy; nordoes anyone knowwhy thebubonic form ofplague, withperhaps a60 percent casefatalityratein the seventeenth century, was much more common in theearly modern period than pneumonic plague, which is morelethal,though bothare causedbythe samemicroorganism.While reliable knowledgeof the vagaries ofplague epidemiology inEuropecontinues toelude investigators, thewealth of extantprimary sourcesfrom the Black Death onward provides historians,amongothers, with sufficient evidence to assess theimpactof 431
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