Abstract
THE charm of Dr. Norman Moore's historical writing rests, as such virtue must rest, on many qualities; on his wide and curious learning sitting lightly upon his pen, his humanity living in his biographical gift, and enriched by his retentive memory, and his appreciation of the past, always informed by his mastery of modern clinical medicine. As his subject for the last Linacre Lecture Dr. Moore chose “The Physician in English History”; that is to say, not a string of all the physicians of English history, but, like the sheep in the painting of the Primrose family, so many as the confines of his hour would admit. The chosen physicians were either distinguished in themselves or came into note at momentous or picturesque occasions. Thus the lecturer gave to his audience not a procession of English physicians, a great story which would indeed be welcome at his hands, but a small gallery of medical pictures set in a historical background. With the propriety of a lecturer in his university of Cambridge, he opened his discourse with Bede's unusually interpretable narrative of the disease and death of Ethelreda of Ely. The skill of Cynifrid, who, apart from the arid cram of Isidore, was probably a fairly competent “Wundaerzt,” failed to save her life. Probably Cynifrid was called in too late, after long courses of monastic quackery.
The Physician in English History.
By Dr. Norman Moore. (Linacre Lecture, 1913, St. John's College, Cambridge.) Pp. 57. (Cambridge: University Press, 1913.) Price 2s. 6d. net.
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The Physician in English History . Nature 93, 239 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093239a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093239a0