Food, ecology and culture. Readings in the anthropology of dietary practices

PHILIP M. TEIGEN (editor), Books, manuscripts, and the history of medicine. Essays on the 50th anniversary of the Osler Library, New York, Science History Publications, 1982, 8vo, pp. [viii], 112, $14.95. On 29 May 1929, The Osler Library was dedicated and accepted by the Principal, Sir Arthur Currie, on behalf of McGill University. It was fitting that fifty years later a group of Oslerolators should assemble at McGill for a celebration at which five bibliographers, librarians, and historians, Charles Roland, Richard Durling, Estelle Brodman, Thomas Tanselle, and Eric Freeman, "examined the ways the history of medicine, librarianship and bibliography still occupy common ground" and too often, as Eric Freeman suggested, fail to do so. Naturally much is said about the Osler-Cushing-Fulton-Keynes axis directed towards biobibliography. No less tribute is paid to McKerrow, Pollard, and Greg, and those whose equal concern was with the printer and the physical aspects of the book itself. Their successors are engaged in descriptive and analytical bibliography on their journey to the chips and the computers a little less humanism, a little more mathematics which must simplify the accessibility of knowledge committed to the written word. But how long will the paper on which the word is written or printed survive? The meeting was a happy one under the wise and courteous chairmanship of Lloyd Stevenson, who contributes the introduction. But it did end with some gloomy predictions for those whose bibliomania is near-neighbour to their bibliographia. Were these the obsequies for that adored object, the book as we know it? And there are worse anxieties; tapes, no less than paper, are not forever. For me, who had seen the empty shelves of the Bibliotheca Osleriana three years before the books arrived, this book, the memorial of a memorable occasion, is a delight and I hope that it will give the vicarious pleasure of the celebration to many, many people. Alfred White Franklin Consultant Physician, London