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Laurie Gluckman. Touching on Deaths: A Medical History of Early Auckland Based on the First 384 Inquests. Edited by Ann Gluckman and Mike Wagg. Auckland, NX: Southern Publishers Group, 2000. 358 pp. $N.Z. 39.95 (paperbound, 0-95821042-X).
The late Laurie Gluckman was a New Zealand-trained physician and psychiatrist with a keen interest in the medical history of his country. A founding member of Auckland's Medical History Society, lie came into possession of a four-volume set of handwritten transcripts of the first 384 inquests held in Auckland following its settlement in 1840. On his retirement from medical practice in 1990, Gluckman set about transcribing and annotating these documents. He was still at work on this task when he died in April 1999, but sufficient material had been drafted to enable his wife, Ann, to see her husband's labors into print.
The result is a book that provides some interesting glimpses into the medical and social conditions of nineteenth-century Auckland....