The monkey gland affair

His method of working involves very close study of the texts in order to uncover the medical concepts of their authors. For example, when he analyses the vocabulary of disease, showing how diseases are described and named, his conclusions illuminate the question of the extent to which individual characteristics ofthe patient are thought to influence the symptoms and course of the disease. One chapter investigates how explanations of psychological illness can illustrate the ways in which the ancient Greeks saw reason, the intellect, and the emotions; others cover early surgery and the development of dietary theory. Comparisons are drawn throughout between the content and form of ancient Greek medicine and that of other early cultures (Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia), the purpose being always to show what is specific to Hippocratic medicine. In particular, di Benedetto examines the early medical texts ofthe form "Ifx symptoms, then y therapy", and the significance ofthe slight variations on this found in Hippocratic medicine. His use of the "techno-therapeutic" treatises is equally careful; he first isolates their specific features, such as the format according to which each disease is described in the order name, symptoms, therapy, prognosis, or the concept of "sign" which links observed phenomena to internal causes, and then goes on to look at other Hippocratic texts to see where and how they differ. He rightly emphasizes that the individuality ofeach text and the range of ways of describing disease found within a single text must first be appreciated, before texts can be linked into groups and the development of particular concepts analysed. As di Benedetto says, the earliest periods of Greek medicine have too often been oversimplified by the use of dichotomies, with treatises seen as "Coan" or "Cnidian", "by Hippocrates" or "by an inferior writer". This book should go a long way towards helping us to understand the complex medical reality of this important period.s account of the curious history of gland transplantation in the early decades of this century focuses on the career of Parisian surgeon Serge Voronoff (1866-195 1). Hamilton sets Voronoff's rise to fame in the 1910s and 1920s firmly amidst the growing recognition of the role of the endocrine glands in the body and the popularity of organotherapy as a mode of treatment. In an era when most of the presumptive hormones had not yet been isolated or chemically characterized, transplanted glands were thought to supply a ready …