oldest of the surgical specialities, badly lacked a good history. There was Demos's introductory chapter for the EncyclopLdie franGa$e d'Urologie of 1914, and Bransford Lewis's 'History written for the American Urological Association in 1933, but the one necessitated a long, dusty search and a struggle with the French, and the other, though amusing, nearly always gave the wrong references. Now Mr. Murphy, a practising urologist, has given us a sensible translation of Desnos with the dull bits left out and has added his own lucid contributions to bring the history up to date. The result is elegant and entertaining, full of illustrations, and backed with complete references. It unfolds the story of urology from the earliest days when surgery was urology and little besides, to the last century when the cystoscope and the Roentgen ray made urology the most precise and most accurate of surgical specialities.
Murphy recalls the brilliant heritage of Sylvius, Vesalius, Fallopius, and Eustachius and traces the story through Frere Jacques, Ambroise Park, Cheselden, Guthrie, Hunter, Lister, and Bigelow. The roll is long and honourable, and even the great William Harvey did not shrink from operating on the testicle. We read again the sorry story of the squabble for recognition of priority in open prostatectomy-Murphy rightly gives credit to Moynihan's ex-house surgeon, McGill of Leeds; we learn of the rise and fall of that non-disease, the floating kidney, which now, alas, has passed the way of tongue-tie and chlorosis. We are told how glow-worms were used to illuminate the bladder and how bougies were generally passed on the upright patient (at St. Peter's they backed them up against a wall). Even that marvellous spoof, the biography of Coude, is not forgotten. This book will entertain and fascinate any surgeon, for it is not the story of a minor branch of surgery but of the main trunk, and still the most vigorous shoot, of a grand old tree.