Here is a popular history of medicine, lavishly illustrated, that we can heartily recommend. The author is not writing for the historian but for the layman, or for physicians whose knowledge of medical history is slender, and he has kept his audience clearly in mind at all times. Consequently the text is pitched at a popular level and does not bog down in minutiae, nor in interminable lists of names. Margotta has covered the entire field of medicine from primitive man to the modern period, and has done so in a brief compass. Nevertheless, the story is a connected one, distinguished by careful selection and an adequate presentation of major concepts.
Then, the author has related the medical achievements to the culture of the different periods, and thereby has given substance and vitality to what otherwise might have been a rather bare chronicle. The great glory of the book is