Health and society in twentieth-century Britain

Well-chosen illustrations and excerpts from sources including Richard Lower, Thomas Willis, John Mayow, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Johannes Bernoulli, Hermann Boerhaave and Albrecht von Haller, aptly evidence the immediate impact of Stensen's theory and the variety of misinterpretations which beset it over the ensuing years. Kardel does not consider the possibility that Stensen may have contributed to these misconceptions by his use of plane rather than solid geometry, and by his failure to realize the difficulties inherent in linking his geometrical abstractions with specific muscles, in vivo, where the form and location of the muscle determined whether the swelling could be readily palpated. Whilst the careful juxtaposition of Latin text and English translation facilitates textual comparisons, readers dependent on the translation will encounter some passages where complex sentence constructions and an inappropriate choice of words detract from the meaning. The reader would also have been better served by combining the endnotes to the English translation and the notes to the Latin text as page footnotes, or at least indicating the existence of a note in the Latin text where the lines are unnumbered. It is disappointing to find most of the Latin text notes untranslated, and few with any indication as to their possible significance. The impetus for this publication came from the realization that certain elements of Stensen's muscle structure and function are pertinent to present day studies. Readers can now judge for themselves the extent to which Kardel's thoughtprovoking reappraisal can be justified in terms of Stensen's stated concepts, theory and vision.