Book Notes
Zohar Amar, Efraim Lev, and Joshua Schwartz, eds. Medicine in Jerusalem throughout the Ages/Ha-refu'ah bi-Yerushalayim le-doroteha. Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University; Jerusalem: C. G. Foundation, 1999. lix + 148 pp. Ill. No price given.
This collection of essays emerged from a conference held at Bar-Ilan University in Jerusalem in 1997. Seven of the nine articles are printed in Hebrew, with summaries in English: "Public Health in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period," by Estée Dvorjetski; "Curing and Nursing in the Church of Jerusalem during the Byzantine Period," by Yaakov Ashkenazi; "Medical Materials in Jerusalem during the Tenth to the Eighteenth Centuries," by Efraim Lev; "Jewish Physicians of Jerusalem in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries," by Zohar Amar; "Franciscan Physicians and Pharmacists in Jerusalem," by Nathan Schur; "A Description of Medical Conditions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Jerusalem," by [End Page 186] Shimon Stern; and "Messianism and Politics in the Establishment of Jewish Medical Services in Jerusalem during the Nineteenth Century," by Shifra Shvarts. The articles by Lawrence Conrad, "Usa\ma ibn Munqidh and Other Witnesses to Frankish and Islamic Medicine in the Era of the Crusades," and by Susan B. Edgington, "The Hospital of St. John in Jerusalem," are in English.
William W. McLendon, William B. Blythe, and Floyd W. Denny, Jr., eds. Norma Berryhill Lectures, 1985-1999: The School of Medicine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill: Medical Foundation of North Carolina, 2000. xiii + 338 pp. Ill. $35.00 (0-9702537-0-2).
The Norma Berryhill Lectures honor a woman whose contributions to the University of North Carolina School of Medicine spanned sixty-five years. As the wife of Dean Walter Reece Berryhill, and a guidance counselor herself, she organized, encouraged, influenced, and supported the medical school. The Lectureship, established in 1985 by the dean, Stuart Bondurant, was intended to be "the intellectual capstone" (p. xi) of the lecturers' careers; the lecturers were chosen, first, on the basis of their significant clinical or scientific contributions, and second, as guides to the school's particular values and traditions.
The first fifteen Berryhill Lecturers and their topics are as follows: 1985, John B. Graham, "Genetics at Chapel Hill: The Evolution of a Program of Graduate Education and Research"; 1986, G. Philip Manire, "Carolina: A Research University, Genesis and Consequences"; 1987, Floyd W. Denny, Jr., "The Growth and Development of Pediatrics in North Carolina and at The University of North Carolina School of Medicine"; 1988, Mary Ellen Jones, "A Potpourri of Thoughts Concerning the Development of Scholars and Women Scientists"; 1989, Colin G. Thomas, Jr., "The Department of Surgery: A Historical Perspective"; 1990, Carl W. Gottschalk, "Carolina's Contributions to Nephrology"; 1991, William B. Blythe, "Esse Quam Videri: The Essence of the University and the Medical School"; 1992, George Johnson, Jr., "Norma Connell Berryhill: A North Carolina Treasure"; 1993, Stuart Bondurant, "Lessons from an Epic"; 1994, Judson J. Van Wyk, "Basic Research in a Clinical Department"; 1995, Christopher C. Fordham, III, "The Magic Continues"; 1996, Frank C. Wilson, "The Leaven of Letters"; 1997, Joseph S. Pagano, "Chapel Hill Odyssey: On the Crew and at the Helm, 1965-1997"; 1998, Joe W. Grisham, "From Morbid Anatomy to Pathogenomics: A Century of Pathology at UNC"; 1999, P. Frederick Sparling, "The Power of Community." [End Page 187]
Steve Baldwin and Melissa Oxlad. Electroshock and Minors: A Fifty-Year Review. West-port, Conn.: Greenwood, 2000. ix + 162 pp. Tables. $59.95 (03-313-30-861-6).
A brief introduction sets out the scope of the book and the authors' point of view:
In the 2000s children and teenagers are still given electroshock for a range of mental health conditions. Even after more than fifty years of electroshock administration with minors, no scientific evidence has ever been generated to support this practice. In the context of the still-developing neurological system, clinicians should be especially careful about "treatments" that risk physical or psychological trauma.
This new text traces the origins of electroshock use with minors from its inception in the 1940s to the 2000s. The underlying political agenda is finally clarified in this report on human rights abuse.
Part 1, "History and Development," encompasses discussions of the
reliability, validity, and utility of psychiatric diagnoses; the
development of electroshock (also referred to as "electroconvulsive")
therapy as a psychiatric treatment; and the ethical and legal aspects
of its use. Part 2 offers case studies from the 1940s through the 1990s,
along with a 1996 review, multiple case sampling, and meta-analysis of all
previously published accounts of ECT administration with minors. Part 3,
"Guidelines and Resolutions," explores the role of nurses in the delivery
of ECT to minors, and includes excerpts from interviews with minors who
underwent this therapy. This section concludes with a chapter entitled
"What Is the Scientific Evidence?"
