Obesity and depression in the Enlightenment: the life and times of George Cheyne

chapters. In a special examination, Seidler shows that the attitude of the German Society of Paediatrics to their Jewish members was characterized by increasing discrimination. Persecutions and assassinations now replaced humiliation and withdrawal of medical licences. Many physicians were able to emigrate in time, others felt desperate and committed suicide. At least seventy-one paediatricians lost their lives in the concentration camps. After the war, a collective suppression of these depressing facts continued for many years. Only a few Jewish paediatricians survived the holocaust in Germany. One of them was Prof. Dr Rudolf Hess, director of the Children's Hospital in Bremen (today called Prof.-Hess-Kinderklinik). In 1933 he was suspended from his position because, according to the principles of National Socialism, he was regarded as a "hybrid of the first degree". Hess was imprisoned in the concentration camp at Farge. Fortunately, he was released and went underground. After the war, Hess was the only paediatrician who returned to his former position. Seidler has reconstructed 629 of the 744 biographies. Since these paediatricians emigrated to more than thirty countries this is an enormous achievement. Studies on the history of emigrants are always difficult and they take a great deal of time. The investigation has some flaws which were partly inevitable. There is a lack of further information concerning 117 of the paediatricians-we know their names but not their fates. In two other samples, paediatricians from Austria and Prague were covered. In general, the Austrian analysis which included only physicians from Vienna was incomplete, while that from Prague consisted exclusively of paediatricians of the German medical school. The question of specialists was not regulated until 1928; that is why older colleagues who had received their education before this date did not present a comparable standard. So it was difficult to classify some physicians. Seidler found that there were various reasons why paediatrics appealed to young Jewish physicians, but he does not analyse this phenomenon. In the quantitative analysis there are small mistakes in adding up the figures. Since publication, the names of further emigrants have been discovered, and these will be added in the next edition. All in all, this is a very comprehensive and inspired study. It should be an example for other medical specialities.