MoliJre and his Medical Associations. By A. M. Brown, M.D.
(The Cotton Press.)—We wish that Dr. Brown had kept to his point. His sub-title very much enlarges the scope of his book: "Glimpses of the Court and Stage—the Faculties and Physicians of the Grand Siècle." Doubtless this enlargement makes it more amusing and, in a way, more valuable. The per- sonality of Louis XIV., for instance, went for so much in the history of the time that an account of his health is not without importance. A quite astonishing list of maladies is that con- tained in the Journal de la Sant!. At seventeen "he had already been a victim to smallpox, gangrene of the toes, tumours of the breast, skin disease, attacks of fevers, diarrheas, and frequent headaches. His manhood was troubled with malignant fever, measles of the vilest type, cancer of the upper jaw, ophthalmia, rheumatism, gout, gravel," to mention some of his ailments, the finishing stroke being senile gangrene. On the whole we are not disposed to quarrel with the book, though the special subject of Moliere and the profession might have been more clearly and attractivelyput forth. The parallel between the French comedian and Plautus is noticeable. The cause of the poet's death, Dr. Brown finds, not, as is sometimes said, in cardiac disease, but in ulceration of the lungs.
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