PARISH REGISTERS can provide the historian of the pre-census era with a wealth of information about many aspects of population change. The registers can be processed to provide data relating to infant mortality and to the incidence of post-natal deaths among mothers. Many registers also list the burials of still-born children. But very few registers give more detail than this. A survey of 354 Y...

other persons who are mentioned because at some time something has been named after them. Historians may hope that future editions will not prune too much on the ground of obsolescence. Manifestly there is no outright "best buy": Firkin & Whitworth contain material not to be found elsewhere, and similarly much that they do not cover is available elsewhere. All depends on what you seek. They can...

S I R H A N S S L O A N E (1660-1753), the eminent Stuart and Georgian physician, was an avid collector of historical manuscripts, particularly those relating to all branches of medicine and the allied sciences. His collection, an original nucleus of the British Museum, remains one of the most important archives for research into the medical history ot early modern Europe. Even the voluminous d...

Taking the other tack, Richard Palmer explores the story of the papal physicians, a subject "killed ... stone dead" by the erudition of Prospero Mandosio (1696) until resurrected by Palmer with his witty and pithy observations. The turn-of-the-seventeenth-century German Prince, Maurice of Hesse-Kassel, took a direct interest in the medical details of his court and country, which Bruce Moran exp...

RICHARD DEACON, Matthew Hopkins; Witch Finder General, London, Frederick Muller, 1976, 8vo, pp. 223, illus., £6.50. The current interest in witchcraft and the occult continues unabated, and no doubt this book is intended for this insatiable appetite. In addition, however, the author, who is a professional writer, claims the relevance of historical witchcraft to similar practices today, which is...

POPULATION estimates, while often arbitrary, merit close attention. While the estimates, often amounting to mere guess-work, reflect belief in what was happening in economic society, once formed they are frequently employed to give hard edges to economic and social phenomena described by historians. They are by no means independent data which may corroborate conclusions arrived at from other so...

The “New Science” of Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, Descartes, Boyle, Steno, etc., and the Baroque in visual arts and literature, are two conspicuous aspects of seventeenth-century European elite culture. If standard historiography of science can be relied upon, the former of the two was not affected by the latter. The lecture asks whether this is a “fact of history” or an artefact of historiography....

power over nature, can work with natural means to effect cures. There is much that is theologically remarkable and psychologically astute, such as the description of the soul's desire for, and integral connection to, the body (chapter 4) or the account, which mingles physiological predisposition and psychological dynamic, of how anger rises from black bile (chapters 3.8 and 6.1). As Berger reco...

The emerging field of pediatric palliative care recommends that terminally ill children and their parents engage in compassionate and honest communication about the end of life. Extensive clinical experience and research attest that young patients often derive comfort from asking questions, sharing their hopes and fears, and receiving loving reassurance. Nevertheless, these conversations can be...

JACQUES GELIS, La sage-femme ou le medecin. Une nouvelle conception de la vie, Paris, Fayard, 1988, 8vo, pp. 560, illus., Fr. 150.00, (paperback). Strictly speaking, in this work Jacques Gelis dwells on the substitution of the matron first by the educated midwife, and then by the obstetrician, as the central figure in the conduct of childbirth. In considering these changes as symptoms of long-t...