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Dr. Zilboorg has written a unique book which demands the gratitude of his colleagues and of the medical historian as well as a large general reading public. Many books dealing with particular phases of psychiatry exist, but until the publication of this history, no book has covered the total period from Hippocrates to our time—much less achieved a synthesis of scientific and historical data, pertinent biography, social and cultural background.
This history is by no means a simple chronicle of events. The unfolding of the development of medical psychology in these pages is a fascinating adventure. The author, being both a psychoanalyst and a sociologist, brings an unusual critical appraisal to bear on the estimation and interpretation of the procession of events, ideas, people.
Reading these pages brings into sharp focus the vicissitudes of new ideas. Great discoveries are made, then vanish; later they reappear briefly, only to disappear again for centuries.
The chief defect of this work is its limitation to 600 pages. The text is substantial, but the subject enormous. We finish the book with the conviction that Zilboorg now has an obligation to give us a complete history of psychiatry in ten volumes.
Following an introduction into the psychiatry of oriental medicine, the school of Hippocrates begins the abandonment of mythological conceptions. The observation of patients becomes more accurate; religion, magic, begin to yield to science. The Greco-Latin school has a real sense of humanity. Different forms of mental diseases are distinguished. Great progress is made in therapeutics. We are constantly aware of the background of a high civilization. Celsus and Aretæus are interesting as 'modern' psychiatrists.
Unfortunately, the Roman Empire becoming too large, this progress was interrupted by an influx of oriental ideas. Then came the German and Arabic invasions and with them the night of the Middle Ages. All progress, slowly acquired, disappeared. People