Reviews.: Contributions to the History of British Surgery

Abstract

THE published registers of a college are not usually books of wide interest, but the two volumes of “Plarr's Lives of the Eellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England” which have jtfst been issued, edited by Sir D'Arcy Power, are very much more than a biographical register, for they provide a history of English surgery during the last hundred years. The Royal College of Surgeons in London was founded in 1800 to take Nthe place of the Corporation of Surgeons, which had separated in 1745 from the joint Company of Barber Surgeons but came to an end through the negligence of its court after a life of about half a century. The College was thus the direct legal successor of the various guilds and companies into which the surgeons of London had successively grouped themselves since the middle of the fourteenth century. In this capacity the College continued to perform the important office of examining and licensing would-be practitioners of the “art and science of surgery”, granting to the successful candidates its diploma of membership.

Plarr's Lives of the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

(Thelwall Thomas Memorial.) Revised by Sir D'Arcy Power., with the assistance of W. G. Spencer and Prof. G. E. Gask. Vol. 1. Pp. xxvi + 752. Vol. 2. Pp. 596. (Bristol: John Wright and Sons, Ltd.; London: Simpkin Marshall, Ltd., 1930.) Cloth, 42s. net; half bound, 57s. 6d. net.