The Historical Relations of Medicine and Surgery. By T. Clifford
Allbutt, M.D. (Macmillan and Co. 2s. (3d. net.)—Professor Allbutt limits his subject by the words "to the end of the sixteenth century," but the general reference to the present con- dition of things is expressly stated. "The present is a critical moment," he writes (p. 3), "in the relations of medicine and surgery, especially in England, where the two branches of the art have been so radically separated as to be regarded as 'two professions,' a moment when it is our duty to contemplate the Unity of Medicine, to forecast its development as a connected whole, and to conceive a rational ideal of its means and ends." It is natural that the movement should initiate with the physicians, who at present are somewhat obscured. The lectures are, of course, largely technical in their treatment, the lay reader meeting with many phrases and terms which are unfamiliar, but the general purport is clear enough. So in another profession there has been an amalgamation of Equity and Common Law. Some practical division must always exiet, but Professor Allbutt will command the suffrages of the vast majority. Indeed, as a matter of fact, wherever the general practitioner administers the art—and he has nine-tenths of the whole—medicine and surgery are amalgamated.
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