Islamic technology: an illustrated history

medicine, and their use may be independent ofParacelsian theory or cosmology. This continuity is further obscured by Beier's belief in such sixteenthand seventeenth-century worthies as Lanfrance ofMilan (fi.1293) and Albertus Magnus (d. 1280, here called A. Magnus), and in such Englishmen as Forestus (Dutch) and the Germans Jacob Rueffand Scultetus. Her reliance only on English versions of their works inevitably leads to misunderstandings of date, origin, and significance. The complex problem ofhow to interpret literary evidence is never faced, although quotations from plays are confidently introduced as solid data. But for those who have not access to the five or so printed diaries and, still more, the three manuscript casebooks, Beier performs a useful service in extracting medical ore and forging from it a coherent narrative. But even here there are difficulties. Her example of female orgasm (p. 214) and her equation of the use of uroscopy with piss prophets are worrying signs of an inability to comprehend certain aspects of seventeenth-century medical theory. Her method of citing the manuscripts according to her own transcript and not by the folio numbers in the manuscripts themselves is slovenly, and makes any attempt to check her transcriptions almost impossible. Even so, it may be worth noting that (Barnabas) Oly of Clare Hall (BL, Sloane 1112, fols. 23v and 33v) was never knighted (as p. 127 declares), and that he lived for more than sixty years after being treated for gonorrhoea. Dr. Barker's casenotes in Sloane 78 = 663 are not, as might be supposed from pp. 271, 278, 299, in two different manuscripts but in a single manuscript given two different classification numbers. It is a pity that the data in this manuscript was not compared with that by the same physician in Sloane 79 = 664, fols. 112r-1 56v, and that the medical productions of Dr Poeton in Sloane 1954 were not supplemented by those of his in Sloane 1965, which are far more extensive than the catalogue might suggest. Overall, this book, in its narrow focus, is as antiquarian as the older medical histories it purports to supplement or replace. True, it includes the occasional vivid story or telling instance, but these cannot compensate for the lack of historical insight or sustain the burden of generalization placed upon them. Besides, a book on medicine of this period that cites neither William Clowes nor Richard Wiseman inevitably lacks savour.