Chapters in American Obstetrics

For one who knows neither medical history nor the science of obstetrics to attempt to review such a text is manifestly presumptuous; and yet I suspect that it is for just such persons that the book is in large part designed. Surely the medical historian will have knowledge of the characters herein described, and obviously the obstetrician can not be an obstetrician if he lacks familiarity with the work of these men, work upon which his whole art and science is based. Bard, Stearns, Dewees, Holmes, Wright, Channing; a list of names of which any story must be interesting, and doubly so when sympathetically told in its relation to the growth of a science so fundamental. As one reads these sketches, which expose character as well as abilities, one can but wonder at the nature of the underlying force which led these men into the field of medicine and leave upon it their distinctive marks. For each one was more than an obstetrician, more than a physician; and each had a faith which was forced to contend with apparently overwhelming odds. And yet, each of them, distinctively individual, forced upon a reluctant profession an idea, and perhaps also an ideal, of lasting importance. Such a story must have been a pleasure in the telling, as it is in the reading; and one can but regret that American obstetrics has not more chapters to be told. Artfully, the author tells just enough of each of these men and of their work to arouse interest in the men, in the subjects which they made peculiarly their own, and in the medical history of the time. The tales are never quite complete, and like all good stories, it would seem that the life lived so happily ever after might well be worth the telling. One might well wish that publishers could adapt their needs to the character of the text. The present book is printed upon a hard-surfaced paper, excellent for portraying a pathological lesion and perhaps suited to offering a catalog of the vices of man, but it is entirely out of harmony with the wealth of warmth and feeling contributed by the author to the story here recorded. GEO. H. SMITH.