Fantasy surgery, 1880–1930: with special reference to Sir William Arbuthnot Lane

specialist opinions was such as to enrage the medical establishment, why did not paediatricians emerge to supply that demand? Perhaps the GPs already had too firm a grip on the family, while the hospital staff, recruited from the teaching hospitals' high-flying physicians, had, unlike the Germans and Americans, little experience of infants and preferred to move on to the adults. Dr Lomax has not been able to analyse the work of the Hospitals for Women and Children where infants might have been seen more often. There was remarkably little paediatric research, the prominence given here, as elsewhere, to Barlow's description of infantile scurvy emphasizes the rarity of such advances. Surgical readers will have some queries about technical points and regret that the 1900 cut-off date precludes the period in which asepsis at last allowed a wider scope for operation. The orthopaedic children's hospitals really deserve a monograph to themselves. It is one of the joys of this excellent book that it will be the starting point for many further fascinating studies of the pre-war children's services.