may safely be taken as models worthy to be copied; and which shall describe, so far as I am able to do this, the methods which they employed to advance the science of medicine, to gain genuine professional success, and to merit the enduring esteem of later generations of physicians. If my efforts prove successful in producing this kind of history it is fair to expect that, in a comparatively short time, those physicians whose interest may have been aroused by the perusal of this less complete and more popular work, will demand something of a more exhaustive character—a book, for example, like the admirable history which Max Neuburger, of Vienna, is now publishing, and of which two volumes have already issued from the press (the first in 1906 and the second in 1911 ).[1] It is to this work and the excellent history written by the late Dr. Haeser, of Breslau, that I am chiefly indebted for the information supplied in these pages; and I therefore desire to make special mention here of this indebtedness. The other sources from which I have been an occasional borrower are all mentioned in the "List of Authorities Consulted." Footnotes and cross-references in the text interfere greatly with one's pleasure in reading a book, and I have therefore not hesitated to introduce them sparingly.
It gives me a special pleasure to call attention here to the far-sighted generosity displayed by the founder of The Williams Memorial Fund in making it practicable henceforth for the Yale University Press to accept for publication medical treatises which deal with the historical and scientific questions of this branch of knowledge, but which for sound business reasons cannot be published on a merely commercial basis.
And I have the further pleasure of expressing my real appreciation of the skill with which the University Press has solved the problems of a suitable size and style of type
- ↑ A third volume is in course of preparation, but the probable date of its publication has not been announced. An English translation of the first volume (by Ernest Playfair) was published by Hodder and Stoughton, of London, in 1910.
