Our Minerva: the men and politics of the University of London, 1836–1858

means that the wider context of medicine at Helmstedt is lost. Conring's defence of Harvey's theory of the circulation of the blood, and the theses that he directed in furtherance of his ideas from 1640 to 1645, needed much more than passing mention, not least since the theses were neglected by Edwin Rosner, Michael Stolleis and, very recently, Roger French in their accounts of Conring's reception of Harvey. One finds little on the relationship between medicine and other parts of the university. Bokel's anatomy lectures in 1585 were given to more than medical students, following the example of Wittenberg, and Caselius, Helmstedt's own Melanchthon, was using Galen's Quod animi mores in his lectures on Greek and on ethics in the 1590s. Much later, Lorenz Heister, professor of medicine, was involved in the initial stages of a theological dissertation by Heinrich von Allwoerden, Historia Michaelis Serveti, 1728. The wider concerns of the Meibom family are only hinted at in their short biographies, and even their medical importance is discussed but briefly. A proper history of medicine at Helmstedt still remains to be written. What we have here is extremely valuable within its own limits, accurate, detailed, and accessible. But it is, as the title of its series proclaims, a Repertory of information, and medical historians of early modern Germany should be grateful for all the hard work that has gone into the collection and organization of this material.