The present volume is published at the solicitation of many friends
who have read the articles contained in it as they appeared at various
times in magazines and who deemed that they were worth preservation in
a more permanent form. The only possible claim for its filling a want
lies in the fact that it presents these workers in medicine not only
as scientists but also and especially as men, in relation to their
environment, social, religious and educational. I have to thank the
editors of the _Messenger, Donahoe's Magazine, The Catholic World_ and
the _Records of the American Catholic Historical Society_, for
permission to reprint the articles which appeared in their
periodicals.
The opening chapter, The Making of Medicine, is an abstract from the
introductory lecture of the course in the history of medicine at the
Fordham University Medical School, New York. Much of the material for
the article on the Irish School of Medicine was gathered for a lecture
before the Historical Club of Johns Hopkins University and the
District Medical Society of the District of Columbia. The sketch of
the life of Dr. Jenner has not hitherto been published. All of the
other articles have been considerably lengthened and revised.
There are other makers of modern medicine who deserve a place beside
those mentioned here, but as the material had reached the amount that
would make a good-sized volume it {viii} was thought better to proceed
with the publication of the first series of sketches, which will be
followed by others if conditions conspire to encourage any further
additions to our not very copious English medical biography. A
subsequent volume will contain sketches of the lives of old-time
makers of medicine in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, the men who laid the firm foundations of our medical
science of the present day.
I have to thank my friend of many years and brother alumnus of Fordham
University, Dr. Austin O'Malley, of Philadelphia, for reading the
proofs and for suggestions while the book was going through the press.
{9}