Medicine and Industrial Society: A History of Hospital Development in Manchester and Its Region, 1752–1946 by John V. Pickstone

Abstract

958 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE began but did not complete. So perhaps one mystery is solved, but another emerges—the Case of the Analytical Engine. Was the building of a programmable mechanical calculating machine within the reach of 19th-century technology? At least two authors have suggested an affirmative answer—Anthony Hyman in his biography, Charles Babbage (Princeton, N.J., 1982), p. 210, and Allan G. Bromley in his study of the analytical engine in Annals ofthe History ofComputing 4 (July 1982): 204. Reading Lindgren’s book, one gets the strong feeling that a more modest approach combined with the will to practical success could have brought Babbage’s dream to life. But if the analytical engine could have been built, then the whole paradigm changes. For then the computer is no longer the essence of high technology but a child of the Industrial Revolution, closer to the spirit of Manchester than of Silicon Valley. We may look forward to the debates to come. Ralf Bulow Dr. Bulow is a member of the research institute of the Deutsches Museum. He is currently working on the history of' computing in Germany, especially the prewar period. His latest work, Denk, Maschine! (Munich, 1988), is an anthology of computerrelated prose and poetry. Medicine and Industrial Society: A History of Hospital Development in Man­ chester and Its Region, 1752—1946. By John V. Pickstone. Manchester and Wolfeboro, N.H.: Manchester University Press, 1985. Pp. xi + 369; notes, bibliography, index. $50.00. Available from 27 South Main Street, Wolfeboro, N.H. 03894. This book is the first of three intended to cover the development of the Manchester area hospitals with an emphasis on their “political ecology.” John Pickstone describes three periods of evolution in local medical charity. The first, the founding of the infirmary in the mid18th century, took place in a center of domestic industry. The second, around 1790, was a radical response to the health and political con­ sequences of early industry. The third related to the weaker reform and extension movements of the late 1820s, at a time of depression when control lay with conservatives. After 1857, the capital of English radicalism for the rest of the century was Birmingham rather than Manchester. Between 1857 and 1887, new or larger voluntary hospitals were built in the major towns of the region. For the most part, they became surgical hospitals, and the major city hospitals became teaching fa­ cilities. The University of Manchester’s medical school became the center of Manchester medicine around 1911. During the interwar years, three hospital types dominated: infectious diseases, mainly for children; voluntary, dominated more and more by specialists and sur­ geons; and municipal, inherited from the time of the Poor Law or TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 959 developed under early-20th-century welfare legislation. Thus, “the vast majority of the hospitals which the National Health Service was to inherit in 1948 as the basis for a single hospital system were already in place by the early 1920s.” Pickstone describes himself as “a historian of the [Manchester] Re­ gion,” and he has provided here an in-depth look at 200 years of medical, social, and political history in one of Britain’s foremost in­ dustrial areas. Elie Feuerwerker Dr. Eeuerwerker was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and is currently a research associate at Boston University’s Center for the Philosophy and History of Science. He is working on the foundation of the Montreal Neurological Institute. Proto-Industrialisation in Scandinavia: Craft Skills in the Industrial Revo­ lution. By Maths Isacson and Lars Magnusson. Leamington Spa and New York: Berg and St. Martin’s Press (dist.), 1987. Pp. x+151; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95. The much-debated concept of proto-industrialization was coined around 1970 to help in analyzing the early rural craft activity that in several cases functioned as the foundation for industrialization in Europe. The term was originally used for the densely populated areas of continental Europe to focus on pre-industrial conditions outside the towns and outside guild restrictions. Maths Isacson and Lars Mag­ nusson apply the term in an open-minded and critical way, in accor­ dance with Gottingen social historians...