John Morgan, Continental Doctor

A History ofParasitology, by W. D. FOSTER, Edinburgh and London, E. & S. Livingstone, 1965, pp. vii, 202, 15 plates, 35s. Medical historians and parasitologists will welcome the appearance at last of a work devoted to the history of parasitology. Hitherto no modern study of this subject has been available with the exception of R. Hoeppli's Parasites and Parasitic Infections in early Medicine and Science (1959), a work designed on quite different lines. One important limitation must however be mentioned. Professor Foster's book deals only with certain groups of human parasites (helminths and protozoa) and deliberately excludes parasitic fungi and arthropods, so depriving us of a history of the mycoses and above all of scabies, a disease of great interest in the evolution of medical ideas. Having made this reservation, one has nothing but praise for Foster's work. In fourteen clearly expressed and well documented chapters he gives us a general survey of the evolution of medical parasitology from antiquity up to 1850, then goes back to trace the development of our knowledge of cestodes, trematodes (flukes and schistosomes), nematodes (trichina, hookworm, filariae), and of various groups of pathogenic protozoa (trypanosomes, Entamoeba histolytica, Babesia, plasmodia) before summing up in a brief conclusion. It should be noted that, apart from some mention in the first, general, chapter nothing is said of ascarids, oxyurids, Leishmania, Toxoplasma, Balantidium, and several other parasites. The book has an index of authors cited but no subject index. It is illustrated with fifteen plates showing early drawings of parasites and portraits of parasitologists. J. TH0DODRID'ES