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Erich Fromm was a highly successful popular author and psychoanalyst who played an important role as a twentieth-century social activist and public intellectual. Friedman’s biography reveals Fromm’s fascinating “lives” as a psychoanalyst, social theorist, cosmopolitan activist, and “prophet” of love who significantly influenced American thought and politics.

Most of this biography has been written without technical details so that the nonscientist can understand it. However some readers might wish to learn more about the science, and this chapter therefore includes my important my most important scientific papers with brief comments on their significance.

A World of Paper: Louis XIV, Colbert de Torcy, and the Rise of the Information State, by John C. Rule and Ben S. Trotter. Montreal & Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2014. xvii, 829 pp. $49.95 CAD (cloth). A welcome addition to the growing corpus of books on the history of information in early modern Europe, A World of Paper by the late John Rule and his former student Ben Trotter elegantly expands our understanding of diplomacy during the reign of the Sun King. The authors ask new questions of documents in the archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and draw on a vast amount of scholarship on bureaucracy. Rule and Trotter use the methods of scholars like Eric Ash, James Cortada, Jacob Soli, and Cornelia Vismann to bring the study of information within the purview of diplomacy. Questioning just what is "modern" about bureaucracy with the help of contingency theory, the authors analyze Jean-Baptiste Colbert de Torcy's foreign affairs department during the latter part of Louis XIV's reign to show both that this ministry was highly specialized and organized by 1715 and that this system is not so different from bureaucracies of our time. The idea of strict barriers between patrimonial and bureaucratic systems already questioned by many scholars (esp. Peter Burke) is shown to be even more problematic in this close study of one of Louis XIV's major ministries. Moving away from Weber's idea of bureaucracy as a machine, the authors emphasize complex human activity and changeable, but sometimes routinized task-based work, as the driving forces in Torcy's department. Throughout the work the authors embrace contingency theory, which posits that organizational effectiveness reaches its pinnacle when structures are specialized to match the needs and size of the organization. They adopt this theory as a means of introducing flexibility in bureaucracy studies so as to avoid using evidence about the period between 1661 and 1715 as "an index of modernity" (p. 30). The book is a long one, and almost half of the printed pages are dedicated to comprehensive notes. The text could have been split into multiple monographs (a biography of Torcy, a prosopography of the commis, and a study of the foreign ministry's portfolio) yet as a whole it is a testament to the life work of Rule. It is premised on the idea that administrative history should not judge the past by a Weberian "idealized rationality" but rather focus on the "actual workings of power" (p. 32). For Rule (1929-2013), the book is the culmination of decades of work, but it is also a publication that reflects Trotter's contributions and research (pp. xiv-xv). Rule and Trotter carefully map out the history of the foreign office under Louis XIV as a bureaucracy in motion, one that depended on unique, skilled individuals as much as it was shaped by the institutional, social, and economic structures of the regime. The title of the book refers to the great waves of paperwork that streamed into and out of the foreign secretary's chambers at Versailles, or later in Paris at Torcy's private residence. Discussion of the ministry's materiality and its inner workings animate this book even more so than the professional biographies of the clerks or ambassadors working under Torcy or his father Croissy. The "things" of ministers, clerks, and diplomats--their mail, horses, pens, gifts, and residences--open up a new appreciation for just how an ancien regime ministry functioned from day to day. Things move, and so Rule and Trotter describe the movements inherent in diplomacy, explaining the importance of equerries and the relais de poste, not to mention the complications of a mobile court. …

IntroductionThe sense of immediacy and individual identity transmitted through personal lettersnmakes them unique sources of biography and history'. They capture the moment and thenmood of the writer in the act of communication. They bring the past to life because theynare so intimately associated with the human beings who inhabited it. As manuscriptsnthey provide tangible evidence of the thoughts and actions of past lives, and as publishedncollections they permit readers both to experience history from a particular point of viewnand to contemplate its unfolding from the privileged position of hindsight.Reading personal letters as historical documents has the effect of reducing thengrand sweep of history to individual experience by providing insights into the humannaction and interaction that shape it, the social dynamics that contribute to the complexitynof why things are as they are. It is because they combine cause and effect with humannpersonality in this way that personal letters are compelling reading for those with anninterest in history and human nature, in the social forces and the interior forces that shapenlives. Nowhere are biography and history more closely linked than in such letters. Andntherein Ues their special value, for they remind us of the paradox associated with writingnhistory and biography: that although the aim of both is the pursuit of truth and order theyncan ultimately never claim to have found either. Letters remind us that history isncomposed of individuals in the act of experiencing, and of communicating theirnexperiences to others, with all the variations of interpretation that suggests; to bencredible any recording of the past must take into consideration a multitude of points ofnview. Thus neither the present, nor the past it becomes, is stable; both exist in a state ofntextual chaos that resists coherent ordering. This is not to say that history cannot benwritten, but rather that no written history can purport to be defmitive, or lay claim tontruly represent the past.The fact that letters cannot always be considered as reliable evidence is in keepingnwith the view of history as a state of textual confusion. n n n

Computer technology has revolutionized radiology with new modalities such as: computed tomography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance and positron emission tomography. The majority of today’s radiologists cannot even imagine how life in a radiological department could be prior to these modalities being introduced. Computed tomography was the first digital modality, with a prototype of a head scanner produced in 1971, followed by clinical production from 1973, and with the first body scanner on the market in 1974. The first head scanner was produced by the English company EMI, most probably based on money they had earned by selling music made by the Beatles. I would guess that no active radiologist today has worked in a department without using one of the digital modalities. In an editorial in this issue of Acta Radiologica (1), Jonn Terje Geitung presents his view on ‘‘Modern radiology and the use of resources. Too much technology (?)’’ and answers the question with a straightforward ‘‘Not at all’’. However, how was life in a radiological department in the first years of radiology; which examinations were performed, how were they performed, and what could be diagnosed? One old statement says that you cannot predict the future without knowing the past. From this issue of Acta Radiologica and in every issue this year, we will present two historical articles from the earliest year, starting with 1921. These articles will illustrate what could be done at that time, how they used X-rays, and what was possible to diagnose? The first issue of Acta Radiologica was published back in January 1921, and this series will therefore start with the presentation of two of the first articles presented to the radiological community. Professor Gosta Forssell from Stockholm founded Acta Radiologica in 1921 and became the first Chief Editor. It is therefore natural to start with his first publication in Acta Radiologica, the Editorial presenting the new journal. English was the official language from the beginning, but both German and French were official languages as well as English. In the beginning Acta Radiologica published articles in these three languages. We will also in every issue of the journal present a minor notice with actual information on articles and authors. The Editorial Board hope and believe that this series will present new knowledge to all of our readers, and increase the reputation of the pioneers of radiology in the early years taking into account what diagnostic possibilities they had compared to modern technology of today. The first of the two articles to be presented in this issue is the editorial written by Professor Forssell (2). Gosta Forsell was born in 1876 and died in 1950. He began as a student in Stockholm in 1895, and soon became assistant to the radiologist Thor Stenbech. Forssell performed in 1899 the first successful treatment of a cutaneous carcinoma by using radiation therapy. Forssell was educated as a MD in 1906 and received the PhD of that time in 1913. In 1916 he became Professor of Radiology at the Radiological Department of the Karolinska Institute. He founded the Swedish Society of Medical Radiology in 1918, The Nordic Society of Medical Radiology in 1919, and Acta Radiologica in 1921. He was Chief Editor until his death in 1950. A sum of money was given on his 65th birthday, and this sum of money has today materialized in the prize ‘‘Xenia Forsselliana’’ given to the first author of the best article from a Nordic institution presented in Acta Radiologica each year. As the second article in the first issue of 2016, we have chosen an article from Sabbatsbergs Hospital in Stockholm, written by the head of the radiological department, Dr M Simon (3). It is indeed interesting to read Dr Simon’s article of a 62-year-old man with

In this issue of Acta Radiologica we present two articles written by two pioneers from the early years. The first article was written by the Norwegian surgeon Christian Magnus Falsen Sinding-Larsen (Fig. 1). SindingLarsen was born in 1866 in Oslo (at that time named Kristiania), and obtained his MD in 1891. From 1892 he was affiliated to the Surgical Departments A and B at Rigshospitalet. His main interest was skeletal tuberculosis in especially children, and he was from 1892 candidate and thereafter consultant and Chief surgeon at ‘‘Kysthospitalet’’ at Stavern, Norway, at that time being a hospital for children with scrofulosis. In later years it became a hospital specialized in orthopedic surgery, today a rehabilitation center. In 1907 he obtained his PhD degree with his publication ‘‘Beitrag zum Studium der Huftgelenks tuberculose’’. In the following years he had several study periods at hospitals in Germany, Austria, France, and Denmark. In 1911 he was appointed managing director at Rigshospitalet in Oslo/Kristiania. Sinding-Larsen had several radiological publications even if he originally was educated as a surgeon, with more than 70 publications concerning surgical topics, but also articles as ‘‘Roentgen treatment of surgical tuberculosis’’ (1925) and ‘‘Don’t forget to obtain an X-ray image of serious back trauma’’ (1927). He was a man with many interests in topics other than surgery and radiology, and he also authored publications as ‘‘Necessary equipment in Prisons in the treatment of diseased prisoners’’ to ‘‘A letter to a fanatical total abstainer’’. On 12 February 1930 he gave a presentation at a meeting of the Norwegian Medical Society. Immediately after his presentation he had a serious heart attack, and was brought to the hospital where he died of a cardiac infarction the same evening. It was said that ‘‘he died with his boots on’’. In this issue of the ‘‘Old Classics’’ we present his article from 1921 about ‘‘An Hitherto Unknown Affection of the Patella in Children’’ (1). The second article in this month’s issue was written by the famous Danish professor Poul Flemming Moller (Fig. 2). He was born in 1885 and died in 1974. He became a medical candidate in 1911. As many radiologists at that time, he started his career first in epidemiology, and later, i.e. in 1914, he studied surgery in Germany. From 1916 he became an assistant at the radiological department at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, and later on he was appointed as radiologist and chief of the radiological department of Fredriksbergs hospital in 1920–1930. In 1930 he was appointed Chief of Rigshospitalet’s radiological clinic and docent at the University of Copenhagen at the same time. From 1936 he became full Professor. As the author of the other article in this issue of the ‘‘Old classics’’, Flemming Moller was interested in tuberculosis, and in 1924 when he defended his thesis dealing with Calve-Legg Perthes disease, he could show