Die Heilkunde in Aachen von römischer Zeit bis zum Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts

Die Heilkunde in Aachen von romischer Zeit bis zum Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts, by EGON SCHMITZ-CLIEVER, Aachen, 1963. (Sonderdruck aus der Zeitschrift des Aachener Geschichts-vereins, Band 74/75), pp. 166, illus., DM. 11. The first part deals with the medical history of Aachen generally, beginning with the Roman thermal baths built from the hot springs sacred to the originally Celtic god Apollo Grannus, through the Middle Ages when certain members of the clergy were exempted from the assumed incompatibility of the medical and their own profession, to the first hospitals and the oaths and position of midwives and barbersurgeons. From the fourteenth century onwards ample documentation is available and produced skilfully and entertainingly. The second, extremely useful, part provides biographical details of Aachen physicians and surgeons chronologically arranged. It is interesting to note that Aachen remained free from the great plague of 1663-67 and that Josef Hartung's management of the Aachen cholera epidemic of 1832 was more successful than the measures aopted elsewhere in the Prussia of the time. MARIANNE WINDER