Abstract
Reviewed by: Alan EH Emery, Oxford, UK. Email: alan.emery@gtc.ox.ac.uk
The Medical Society of London was founded in 1773, becoming the Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1805 with the Royal appellation in 1834. Its most important papers read at the Society meetings were published in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of the Transactions in 1809, the editors have selected what have become classic works in medicine and surgery. In each of the 23 cases selected, there is a photographic reproduction of the original article with, in many cases, a portrait of the author, followed by comments by the editors and various selected references as well as later contributions on the subject.
Those chosen for detailed study include, for example, Astley Cooper, Edward Jenner, Thomas Hodgkin, Richard Bright, Benjamin Brody, Alfred Garrod, Edward Meryon, James Paget and Frederick Treves. However, in many cases the selected publication is not perhaps the one that many readers might associate with the author’s name. For instance, Edward Jenner’s paper concerns ‘Observations on the Distemper in Dogs’ and not vaccination. However, the editors in every case also add a brief essay on the work the author is perhaps most known for. But in other cases, for example Thomas Hodgkin, Alfred Garrod, Edward Meryon and James Paget, the paper presented is related to the eponymous association.
The reviewer being a geneticist was most interested in the Garrod paper (the beginnings of the study of inborn errors of metabolism) and Edward Meryon (the first clear clinical and familial study of Duchenne muscular dystrophy). Incidentally, Meryon’s disease is inherited not as an X-linked dominant but as an X-linked recessive with manifestations in some female carriers as a result of Lyonisation. Edward Meryon is now of course internationally recognised with a plaque on his former house in Clarges Street, Piccadilly, inclusion in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and the establishment of the Meryon Society.
The editors also include a Time Line of papers published in this volume with parallel lines for literature, art and music, science and technology, and world affairs from 1850 to 1900, a very interesting addition.
The book is well referenced and indexed. It is an excellent tribute to the Royal Society of Medicine and will no doubt become a classic in the literature of medical history.