Book Reviews

changing views of human nature, and is written by the editor, who is Professor of
English in the University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles.

Clearly, both sides of the coin are necessary for a balanced view of the Renaissance
and Dr. Kinsman has done well to illuminate the reverse face.

SIR CYRIL BURT, ESP and psychology, edited by Anita Gregory, London,
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975, 8vo, pp. vii, 179, £4.50.
Although Cyril Burt (1883-1971) is best known for his work on the application of

psychology to education, to the development of children and to the assessment of
mental qualities, he also contributed to ESP, as an obituarist had to point out (The
Times, 15 October 1971). This book, stimulated by the same obituarist, contains eight
carefully selected essays based on articles, lectures or reviews, all published except the
last two. They range from 1935 to 1967, but most were written in the 1960s.

Burt believed that consciousness is a central feature of psychology, and that the
application of mathematics to psychology is likewise essential. These two extremes
arose out of his work in educational and developmental psychology, which closely
resemble para-psychology because in each an amalgam of personal experience and
impeccable experimental and statistical data is essential. Burt's attraction to ESP is
therefore understandable, and in the brief but informative introduction the editor
explains this and other background features of his interest in, and approach to, what in
his day was an unorthodoxy. However, his statement that ESP is a natural phenome-
non that should be part of psychology, although held as heretical when made, may
now, in view ofincreasing data, be more acceptable.
The editor has chosen only papers intended for the general reader, and together they

provide us with an excellent survey of Burt's work on ESP. Whether right or wrong,
as may be judged in the future, there is no doubt that ESP forms an important part of
the history ofpsychology in general.

WHITFIELD J. BELL, jr., The colonialphysician and other essays, New York, Science
History Publications, 1975, 8vo, pp. [2 11], 229, illus., paperback, [no price stated].
Since 1940 Whitfield Bell, a historian by training, has been publishing papers on the

history of North American medicine. He now collects together sixteen of them, and as
the title of the book, which is also the title of the first paper, suggests, they deal pre-
dominently with the eighteenth century. All but three ('A portrait of the Colonial
physician', 'Philadelphia medical students in Europe, 1750-1800', 'Body-snatching in
Philadelphia') are centred on the activities of individuals, and amongst others there are
John Redman, Benjamin Franklin, John Morgan and William Shippen. Each essay is a
scholarly contribution with full documentation and written in a pleasing style. As a
collection they present an excellent survey of eighteenth-century American medicine,
together with vivid insights into the activities of particular physicians. Moreover, as
most of this medicine stemmed from European practice, Dr. Bell's book should be
studied carefully by all those engaged in any aspect of medicine in the eighteenth
century, as well as students ofAmerican medicine. It can be warmly recommended, and
it is to be hoped that Dr. Bell, the accepted authority on Colonial American medicine
and science, will now provide an integrated history ofthis formative period.

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