La médecine à Lausanne du XVIe au XXe siècle

sequence of two parallel threads would have been much better. This quirk inevitably holds back, until after the EMI scanner, all the work of those who had CT in use clinically, albeit with radionuclides, before the prototype X-ray EMI scanner began to be used. It is thoroughly disappointing to see the UK work played down as "also rans", for example the work in Aberdeen is given only half a page, and is relegated to a later date-1972-than when it actually occurred. Their home-built machine, digital from the outset, was working in the autumn of 1970, a year before the very first clinical X-ray CT scan with the EMI scanner in October 1971. The Aberdeen scanner was providing a clinical service from January 1971 onwards: indeed, Aberdeen had emission tomography 7 years before X-ray CT arrived there. There is no excuse for the author not getting the record straight here, because correspondence and conversations with pioneering workers are quoted virtually verbatim throughout this book; but no communication with the Aberdeen team is reported, in spite of the fact that Steve Webb is co-author of a paper reporting a detailed performance assessment of the Aberdeen machine in 1981. It compared very favourably with the best that U.S. Industry could produce 7 to 8 years afterwards! Where is there a mention of the British Company, J. & P. Ltd of Reading, who bravely produced a version based on the Aberdeen machine and sold twenty of them, but, through lack of support from the City financiers, went under? A familiar tale. This national tendency to play down anything British makes the work of British scientific historians suspect; the reader has to ask the questions: has anyone British of note in this story been missed out? Has their true role been properly acknowledged? In the PET section I could find no mention of the Swedish developments leading to the Scanditronix commercial machine-nor of the M.R.C. attempts at Hammersmith Hospital to use a home-made positron gamma camera. In summary, this book is a fascinating and very good comprehensive account of the early days of tomography, but it is less than comprehensive, particularly in European and British work in the field in the later period. Nevertheless, it is a good start and maybe a second edition will put it right. All those using tomography, or interested in it, should have a good look at it.