Memory, wisdom and healing: the history of domestic plant medicine

young, there are purple patches and youthful vanities in his writing. Not for him the advice of Samuel Johnson to the effect that if ever you write a passage of which you are particularly proud, strike it out. For all that, the diaries are very readable and one grows fond of young Wright as he records every conceivable detail of his hopes and ambitions, what he had to eat, how he dressed for various occasions, and how he spent most of his days visiting patients on horseback with all the hazards, troubles and occasional joys of this form of transport. Much of his practice was amongst the mining villages which suffered from a horrifying number of serious accidents. He is at his best when describing how he dealt with such surgical cases and I have learnt more about the ordinary everyday work of a provincial surgeon in the 1820s from this diary than from any other source. He was much less confident when dealing with medical cases. From the way he writes, I have little doubt that he was, incidentally, unusually kind and considerate to his patients. It was customary for apprentices on a five-year apprenticeship to spend a "session" attending lectures and demonstrations at a medical school. Wright went to Edinburgh for this purpose and his account of what he did and what he saw is fascinating. The diary was written as a series of separate volumes, which turned up in British Columbia and were donated to the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. A few of the volumes were missing but a new one has just been found, too late, sadly, to be included in this book. But I hope it may appear as a separate paper. Alastair Johnson has done a considerable service to the history of medicine by the long and arduous work of transcribing this diary, by his excellent introduction and detailed but unobtrusive editing and footnoting, and an excellent index. For those who love the primary sources of medical history this really is a gem of a book.