Biographical Memoirs Volume 89 (2007) / Chapter Skim
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OWSEI TEMKIN
OWSEI TEMKIN
Pages 324-343
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Photo by Robert Myers, Courtesy Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives, Johns Hopkins University.
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He understood his own intellectual powers and the place they gave him in society, but he abhorred self-promotion, mainly because it was inconsistent with dispassionate scholarship. The timing of Temkin's election to the National Academy of Sciences was paradigmatic of the way he achieved recognition for his work -- late but in nearly full measure.
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The young scholar felt the sting of being an alien in German society, but he also benefited from the residual rigor of the German educational system, which still remained partially intact after the disaster of World War I In 1922 he enrolled at the University of Leipzig: I was asked to state my field of study.
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In 1932 he followed Sigerist to the recently founded Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Both young men -- Sigerist and Temkin -- were recruited by the legendary William H
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(Shryock had been appointed in 1949, two years after Sigerist's retirement.) In 1964 Temkin also became professor of the history of medicine in the Johns Hopkins Department of the History of Science.
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. Edelstein worked at the Johns Hopkins institute from 1934 to 1947 and again from 1952 to 1960.
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. In 1969 Temkin delivered the Hideyo Noguchi Lectures at Johns Hopkins, and in 1970 he gave the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.
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Given epilepsy's long association with religion, evil, magic, and scientific theorizing, it could be the perfect vehicle for such an investigation; as usual, the scholarly devil is in the myriad detail. For each historical period (antiquity, Middle Ages, Renaissance, the Enlightenment, nineteenth century)
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Most of the substantive changes in the revised edition of The Falling Sickness deal with the more recent history of epilepsy. Temkin extended his historical cutoff date by a decade to approximately 1890, "except in the case of Hughlings Jackson, where it seemed advisable to avoid any
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His authoritative legacy was carried into the Renaissance, and parts of it persisted into the nineteenth century. Temkin analyzed the philosophical underpinnings of this legacy, starting with the Platonic background of Galen's medical and scientific ideals.
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. The idea for the book was "planted" by Shryock and doggedly pursued by Jack Goellner, director of the Johns Hopkins University Press, until it was published in 1977.
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The first sentence of Temkin's preface poses the question, "How did the fame of the Greek physician Hippocrates fare during the first six centuries of our era, during which a pagan culture was transformed into a Christian one?
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. It is also interesting to note that serious historical interest in phrenology developed widely only in the late twentieth century.
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I am also indebted to the assistance provided by Andrew Harrison at the Chesney Archives at Johns Hopkins (see note 2 below)
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Kac to Temkin, May 10, 1978, in Temkin papers at the Alan Mason Chesney Medical Archives of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (henceforth, Temkin/JHMI Archives)
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The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine and the Welch Medical Library. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.
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1977 The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medi cine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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342 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 2002 "On Second Thought" and Other Essays in the History of Medicine and Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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