Beyond aesthetics. Investigations into the nature of visual art

ERNA LESKY (editor), A system of complete medical police. Selectionsfrom Johann Peter Frank, Baltimore, Md., and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, 8vo, pp. xxiii, 469, £24.00. J. P. Frank (1745-1821) of Vienna is renowned for his 6,262 page System einer vollstandigen medicinischen Polizey. It has never been translated into English and this is the first extensive selection from it in translation. It is intended for the physician, medical historian, social worker, historian, sociologist, and cultural historian. Those of us who have tried to read Frank's German will be especially grateful to the translators, and also to Professor Lesky for her excellent 'Introduction'. She must also be congratulated on the selections she has made from such a voluminous work. Together they give a very fair impression of the whole treatise and present Frank's main lines of thought and the problems of the eighteenth century that he was attempting to combat. The editor also aims to demonstrate the philanthropic mood of his time and problems of population, as well as Frank's liberal attitude to social problems. Professor Lesky has once more placed us in her debt by producing an important contribution to the history of medicine, and it is, therefore, a pity that only a limited number may benefit from it in view of the very high price.