Review by Choice Review
The subtitle of this volume is curious: although it certainly covers medicine and science in the late 19th century context, it is a professional biography of Edward Livingston Trudeau (1848-1915), who founded America's first tuberculosis sanatorium at Saranac Lake, New York. Himself a tuberculosis survivor, Trudeau was a New York City physician who discovered his salvation in the woods and pure air of the Adirondacks. A man of science as well as a humanitarian, and a first-class fund raiser, he repeated and amplified many of Robert Koch's landmark experiments on the tubercle bacillus. The most significant scientific passages of his autobiography are reprinted in the recent From Consumption to Tuberculosis, ed. by Barbara G. Rosenkrantz (CH, Sep'94). Author Ellison has read everything Trudeau read about the disease as well as everything he wrote, and what results from all this research is a specialized time capsule of medicine in the late 19th century. Well organized and clearly written, this is an arcane book whose value is limited to those persons with very specific and focused interests. It should be in comprehensive medical history collections. Graduate; faculty. I. Richman; Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
