A Select Bibliography of Medical Biography, with an Introductory Essay on Medical Biography

Medical Officer, where he remained until his retirement in 1950. At the Ministry he was responsible for organizing the introduction of the National Health Service which came into being on 5 July 1948. Following his retirement he was appointed medical adviser to the King Edward's Hospital Fund for Lpndon. Such are the bare facts of the career of a man who pres4nted the picture of great public success and who was equally fortunate in enjoying a happy family life. His first wife died suddenly in 1958 and subsequently he married again, this union lasting until his death from cancer in 1962. Undoubtedly he was a sensitive, kindly individual with a sincere interest in other people and the power to put them at their ease. Dr. Neville Goodman was both a student and colleague of Jameson. He is thus well fitted to carry out his self-imposed biographical task. This he has done with skill, understanding and sympathy. In addition to Jameson's life, the book also contains a valuable summary of the makings of the National Health Service from the Civil Service point of view. It can be unreservedly recommended to doctor and layman alike for the information it contains and the insight it gives into the life of one of our most illustrious pioneers of Public Health. This edition follows the same pattern as its predecessor; it is enlarged by an index of authors, editors and translators and a useful introductory essay, which provides a general survey of the subject and a guide to sources outside the scope of the bibliography itself. The two sections of collective and individual biography contain between them some 275 new entries. The criteria for inclusion (monographs published in English in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries) are justified by practical considerations of compilation and by the nature of the series; they suit the needs of reference librarians and students rather than medical historians. Strangely, at least two eighteenth-century items are included. The addition of about ninety new names to this section fills many gaps in the previous edition but it is a pity that there are no cross-references to the section of collective biography either for subtsantial biographies in collective volumes or for figures who do not appear in the section of individual biography. The book actually includes full-page portraits of Mead and Askew from The gold-headed cane but neither has yet received a full-length biography. …