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The Story of Medicine, by Victor Robinson
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- Sales Rank: #5352338 in Books
- Published on: 2005-06-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.02" h x 1.28" w x 5.98" l, 1.84 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 576 pages
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A story of medicine from the secular humanist perspective
By Dr. Miguel Faria
The Story of Medicine by Victor Robinson, M.D. The New Home Library, New York; 1943. Bibliographical Notes, Indexed, 564 pages.
Dr. Victor Robinson was Professor of History of Medicine, Temple University School of Medicine, Philadelphia.[1] Because the history of medicine has been neglected for decades, this specialty will no longer be found listed among the faculty or the subject of any medical school curriculum. This is a deficiency that the late scholar Plinio Prioreschi, M.D., PhD, lamented in the first three volumes of his monumental A History of Medicine, and I cannot help mentioning it too.[2,3,4] Medical history is medicine and medical ethics and should continue to be a subject of study and research for future physicians. If they don't know where they come from, how do the young doctors know where they are going or are being led by others?
Unfortunately, this book has its own detractions. I will not dwell on the difference in interpretation on medical history, but I would be remiss if I did not mention several instances in which I find fault with this author. One has to do with Chapter 3, "Greek Medicine in Rome."[7] Rome, Roman culture and Romans in general are depicted in the worst possible light. Robinson obviously has a prejudicial view of Roman civilization and cannot prevent his bias from entering into the narrative. This is inexplicable for a professor of medical history, and I must call it as I see it. The worst sides of Cato the Elder, Julius Caesar, even the great historian Tacitus, are presented in their darkest moments. Tacitus himself is thrown on the pile of Romans who were, according to Robinson, "students of sexual perversions and psychopathology."[7] Rome itself, Robinson trumpeted, is a "brothel with emperor or empress as chief whoremonger. Julius Caesar gave his virginity to King Nicomedes...the bald adulterer -- which is why he insisted on wearing the laurel-crown...." Which brings us to the point that this is a book on medical history and not on the debaucheries and sexual perversions of Rome, as tantalizing as that subject may be. It is also not fair to so characterize the great civilization that brought us the marvels of civil engineering, jurisprudence, classical scholarship (e.g. Cicero, Varro, Vitruvius, Pliny, etc.), literature (e.g., Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Lucretrius [the only Roman singled out for praise without caveats], etc.), historians (e.g. Livy, Plutarch, Tacitus, etc.), as well as public health advances, which were not to be surpassed until the 19th century. It was also Roman power that kept the barbarians at bay for centuries until Christianity had half tamed them before the final collapse of Rome in A.D. 476. It is also unfair to the exalted medical figures who practiced Roman medicine, e.g., Celsus, Scribonius Largo, Dioscorides, Asclepiades, Soranus, Galen, etc.
Moreover, this incursion into foreign territory by Robinson brings errors into the narrative.[7] While the peccadillos on emperors, empresses, and Julius Caesar may have been correct in many instances, Robinson makes blanket statements condemning an entire civilization. As to the laurel crown, it is factually incorrect. It was an Oak Crown won by Julius Caesar as a young military commander when he saved a whole Roman legion from utter destruction in a war in Asia Minor. The Oak Crown was awarded to him and by the laws of Sulla, Caesar was to wear it on all public occasions, such as at the Senate, and other civic ceremonies, which for men of his standing were frequent.
This anti-Roman bias is also depicted throughout the entire chapter, including medical history itself. For example, Robinson delights in describing the disgusting and inefficient medications (Dreckapotheke) prescribed by the Roman pater familiae for their families, slaves and themselves. It gives the impression that the Dreckapotheke was the invention of the Romans when, in fact, these filthy and disgusting substances were prescribed by physicians in all ancient civilizations, including Greek physicians in the Corpus Hippocraticum.[2-3]
Robinson does not like Galen, the man or the clinician, even when he reluctantly admits Galen is a "giant among dwarfs" and credits him as "the founder of experimental physiology." Galen is loudly applauded only when he derides and excoriates his physician colleagues for their alleged ignorance, greed, and sycophancy. He also applauds Galen's diatribes against athletes and physical sports.[8]
The problem with this author is that he passes judgment on historical figures based on the standards of his own time, and not of the era in question. He passes harsh judgment on Galen because the great physician from Pergamum also subscribes to teleology, which is a major academic sin in the eyes of Robinson, who smells religion at every turn, even from a pagan. At the heart of the matter for Robinson is Galen's unpardonable sin, same as for Aristotle's -- i.e., the teleological concept of intelligent design and final cause and the belief of these men in the existence of a Creator.[9] As will become evident to the reader this is an unforgivable intellectual sin and anathema to Robinson's inchoate secular humanism.
In Chapter VI, "Arabian Medicine in the Middle Ages," despite the title, Robinson takes a Parthian shot at Rome, his first bogeyman, and then enters the realm of early Christian theology and history to take aim at his second bogeyman, or rather punching bad, the Medieval Christian Church. He writes: "Even the crimes of Imperial Rome grow pale in comparison with the amount of human blood that was now shed over myths."[10]
Robinson then gallops, condemns and describes graphically the evils of the Christian Crusades, while forgetting to relate the much more bloody Mohammedan conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, which are largely glossed over. Robinson then anathematizes the three monotheistic religions, but Christianity is always the worst offender, receiving the highest vituperations. Only Buddhism is cited for praise and given credit for peace, compassion and the inception of the first hospitals. Islam is cited positively in this regard, but Christianity is given no credit, cited only for violence, ignorance, and superstition. Animosity then animates Robinson, who forgetting the contribution of monks, such as Cassiodorus (c. A.D. 490-580) already copying and preserving the Greek and Latin classics a century earlier in the Benedictine monasteries of the West,[11] writes:
From Jundisapur, Greek science spread throughout the Moslem world. When the intellect of Europe was so clouded by monkish fables that the monasteries were buying milk purportedly to come from the breast of the Blessed Virgin, barbarian brown-skinned tent dwellers became the saviors of Greek philosophy.[12]
The attempted amalgamation of Origen between Christianity and the teachings of Plato and Aristotle is described as, "a bridge over which antiquity walked into Medievalism."[10] Once again rancor befuddles Robinson who forgets that after the fall of Rome in A.D. 476, it was the Dark Ages which followed for nearly 500 years before the Middle Ages can be characterized as Medievalism (A.D. c.1000-1300). Acrimonious bias against Christianity unfortunately mars this book in many places.
We finally enter the topic at hand in this chapter, and we read sympathetic biographies of the Arabic and Islamic physicians and medical philosophers: Rhazes, Avicenna, Avenzoar, Averroës, and Albucasis, all get good marks. Albucasis hardly gets upbraided for making cautery, the hot iron, the hallmark of Islamic surgery. Averroës, an Islamic dissenter who admired Aristotle and attempted to reconcile the Greek sage to Islamic teachings, gets a hagiography; but Maimonides, a devout Jewish physician and philosopher, gets a bad rap for his attempted reconciliation of Aristotle with Judaism.[13]
All religions are bad enough but some religions and devotions are worse than others, at least in the mind of Robinson, and the intolerance he traces to the three monotheistic religions creeps into his own writings with a vengeance. Particular venom is directed to Christianity. Early in Chapter VII, "European Medicine in the Middle Ages," Robinson summarizes what we can expect to find in this chapter, and what we also have come to expect from him. We're not far off the mark. He writes:
It's a tragic day for Europe when it exchanges the myths of the Greeks for the myths of the Jews. Jupiter smiles in Homer and laughs aloud in Hesiod, but Jehovah of the Jews is a chronic dyspeptic, belching fire and brimstone, threatening and cursing, hating and slaughtering the human race. Intolerance is his keynote, and destruction is the passion of the Lord of eternal vengeance. The gloom of the Scriptures descends upon medievalism.[14]
Thus, Chapter VII is another an eye-opener. Although much of what Robinson writes is true and his conclusions are frequently valid, his intensity and zeal to expose "superstition" often lead him astray. Robinson for example had forgotten that he had excoriated and condemned Rome and her civilization, but now suddenly he realizes that the fall of Rome has caused the curtains of the Dark Ages to fall on the stage of Europe and the "bloodthirsty" Romans are supplanted by the "bloodthirsty" Christians. The fact that Rome kept the barbarians in the West at bay for centuries safeguarding the Mediterranean sea, encouraging trade and commerce, and protecting Greek and Roman civilizations, did not occur to Robinson. The fact that Christianity had partially tamed the barbarian conquerors did not enter his mind. Those facts are not admitted or considered. He sees only the dark side of Rome and Western institutions. The Fall of Rome is only lamented because Christian religion enters the picture in a big way. Instead of accepting the verdict of history that cannot be undone, Robinson now castigates Europe for the inception of mysticism, superstition, pietism, and religion -- which now in his mind is a blend of two evil bogeymen: Roman culture and Christianity. Graeco-Roman medicine, he laments, has been substituted for supernaturalistic Christian piety. Only Arabian and Islamic medicine are given credit for recovering and preserving Greek naturalistic medicine and the works of Aristotle. Once again Robinson has forgotten and barely mentions the two other repositories of learning, the Christian Benedictine monasteries, where monks copied the classics and practiced monastic medicine, and the basilicas in Christian Constantinople, where exegeses were published and the scribes also preserved and copied invaluable manuscripts.[4,11]
As we have seen Robinson has been belching his own fire and brimstone against sundry malefactors, from Greek medicine in Rome and Roman culture to European Medievalism, so much so that he clouds his own "story of medicine." Consider his accusation that ancient Roman and later European Medievalism prevented human dissection and the collection of anatomical knowledge essential to medicine and surgery. And the fact that this antipathy to dissecting the human body, to add to Robinson's ire, occurred despite the "butchery" and "bloodshed" of pagan Romans as well as Medieval churchmen, who had plenty of material, corpses from the carnage, available for anatomical study! Incidentally he inflates his figures for the bloodshed and provides no references. The fact is ancient Egyptians performed millions of embalmings and also did not do any human dissection of the bodies in search of anatomical knowledge; neither did the Mesopotamian or Chinese physicians. And the Greek naturalists, so much praised by Robinson in other matters, themselves did not perform human dissection. The Greeks also refrained from opening cadavers despite their curiosity about nature and the world around them. Other than Aristotle and Galen, who performed systematic animal dissection, there were no anatomists in the ancient world, except for the brief tenure of Herophilus and Erasistratus in Alexandria in the 3rd-4th century B.C., who actually performed human dissection, which was not continued by those who followed. Dr. Plinio Prioreschi has noted that anatomy was of little use to physicians and surgeons in ancient times.[3,4] Even after the great advances in anatomical knowledge and physiology during the Renaissance with Andrea Vesalius (1514-1564) and then with William Harvey (1578-1657) -- not until the 19th century would scientific and clinical medicine make systematic strides forward, and not until the turn of the century would a seriously ill patient benefit with a greater than 50% chance from consultation with the physician.[2-4]
Chapters VIII, IX, and X deal with medicine during the Renaissance and through the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries and describe the medical arts in those epochs,[15] including the thwarted scientific revolutions started with Vesalius and Harvey, revolutions that did not bring about practical advances until the 19th century as mentioned.[2-4]
In short, those readers who share Robinsons' aversion to European culture and Roman civilization in general and to religion and Christianity in particular, will love this book within the context of medical history. Those on the opposite side will raise their eyebrows and raise objections, as I have done. Those who are less fastidious about these political, ideological and cultural matters, and who thirst for medical history, will find this book helpful, except perhaps for the final chapters --i.e., Chapters XI, XII, and XIII dealing with the Modernization of Medicine, Medicine in America, and Sociology in America --which could be judged as tedious, out-of-date, and with mixed prognostication for the future of medicine.[16]
Nevertheless, despite these major concerns, I would recommend this book to students of medical history with serious reservations. For readers who enjoy Robinson's style of narrative but without the vituperations, I would also recommend Devils, Drugs and Doctors (1929) and The Doctor in History (reprinted 1989) by Howard W. Haggard (1891-1959). Haggard matches Robinson on eloquence, erudition, and wit without evoking prejudicial biases. And his storytelling abilities are superior. For more recent references and scholarly work, I recommend the relatively new, multi-volume classic, A History of Medicine, by Plinio Prioreschi, MD, PhD,[2-4] -- works which I am in the process of reviewing, at least the first three volumes. This review is extracted from a longer review
References
1. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine.The New Home Library, New York; 1943.
2. Prioreschi P. A History of Medicine. Vol. I: Primitive and Ancient Medicine. Omaha, Nebraska: Horatius Press; 1995.
3. Prioreschi P. A History of Medicine: Vol. II: Greek Medicine. Omaha, Nebraska: Horatius Press; 1996.
4. Prioreschi P. A History of Medicine: Vol. III: Roman Medicine. Omaha, Nebraska: Horatius Press; 1998.
5. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p. 47-48.
6. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p. 70-71.
7. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p. 86-87.
8. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p. 127-130.
9. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.131-33.
10. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine.The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.136.
11. Faria MA. Vandals at the Gates of Medicine: Historic Perspectives on the Battle over Health Care Reform -- Historic Perspectives on the Battle Over Health Care Reform. Macon, GA: Hacienda Publishing, Inc.; 1994, p. 266-274.
12. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.134-146.
13. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.146-192.
14. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.196-197.
14. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.238-370.
14. Robinson V. The Story of Medicine. The New Home Library, New York; 1943, p.371-520.
Miguel A. Faria Jr. M.D. is a neurosurgeon and the author of the book, Vandals at the gates of Medicine (1995) and many articles on science, politics, and medicine.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
great overview of medical history within the context of the 1930s
By Amazon Customer
Victor Robinson M.D. is the Mark Twain of medical writers. His journalism is insightful and engaging. I got turned onto him with a previous work--"An Essay on Hasheesh." When I'm done reading the book I'm going to be getting more Dr. Robinson's writings. "The Story of Medicine: From Medicine Man to Modern Physician" should be in the library of everyone in the medical profession as well as those are considering the profession as a career.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
The best history of medicine ever written
By Adjudged
The ultimate history of medicine by a consummate writer - I have read many and this one is the best. Enthralling. Read the introduction to James Marion Simms, M.D. and you will be in love
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