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RR 2007/284 Dictionary of Medical Biography Edited by W.F Bynum and Helen Bynum Greenwood Press Westport, CT 2007 5 vols ISBN 978 0 313 32877 0 £450 $749.95
Keywords Dictionaries, Doctors, History
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120710775507
The Dictionary of Medical Biography provides authoritative biographical coverage of major medical practitioners in all times and cultures. While its emphasis is on practitioners within the western medical tradition, it also covers practitioners of alternative medicines, as well as major figures in traditional Chinese, Indian and Islamic medicine. It is edited by William F. Bynum, Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of London, and Helen Bynum, a freelance writer and author of several medical texts such as Success in Africa (Bynum, 2002).
In order to grasp what this extensive work entails, I will outline its key features in figures. Overall, it spans over five volumes with a total of almost 1.25 million words. There are over 1,100 entries on almost every important figure in medicine, written by the leading scholars in the field. Over 400 scholars, researchers and physicians contributed to the work, including many leaders in their medical fields. In addition, it contains extensive overview essays on the important medical traditions of the world, e.g. Chinese, Indian and Islamic. There...