On Barthes' Biography: A Dialogue

A Select Bibliography of Medical Biography, with an Introductory Essay on Medical Biography

Medical Officer, where he remained until his retirement in 1950. At the Ministry he was responsible for organizing the introduction of the National Health Service which came into being on 5 July 1948. Following his retirement he was appointed medical adviser to the King Edward's Hospital Fund for Lpndon. Such are the bare facts of the career of a man who pres4nted the picture of great public su...

Walter Reed. A biography

WILLIAM B. BEAN, Walter Reed. A biography, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1982, 8vo, pp. xiv, 190, $12.95. I enjoyed reading Dr Bean's life of Walter Reed. Its style and content fall somewhere between the writings of Paul de Kruif and Gwyn Macfarlane's life of Howard Florey. In fact, there are striking resemblances to Macfarlane's book, as the author has been to enormous trouble...

Harvey Cushing, A Biography

The physician of today may be somewhat bewildered in the face of the vast current literature on penicillin and the conflicting views on methods of administration, dosages, and indications. Dr. Fleming and his 28 associates have now provided a most authoritative and yet practical guide-book concerning the place of this agent in medicine. No one will deny that much remains to be learned of penici...

The Nicolai case. A biography

xix). Despite a tendency to interpretative ad hoc-ism, it does bring together the important monographic work (e.g. Bynum, Searle, Stocking, Young) that has been done, and in some instances offers perceptive independent readings of particular figures. One might quarrel with the decision to focus on the natural sciences in isolation from the social (and the failure adequately to appreciate the wa...

Sir Christopher Wren. A biography