Colin L Talley’s A history of multiple sclerosis will find itself on the shelves of many of the estimated 2.5 million people worldwide with multiple sclerosis (MS), in medical schools, history departments and health activists’ offices. The intended readership is wide and it does deliver. Based partly on his PhD research, Talley has written an accessible and relevant history. His main argument is that institutional contexts have been vital in enabling the changes in our experience of MS as disease and illness. His particular assertion is that, if we wish to improve the lot of people with MS, history tells us that the solution lies in state intervention—the provision of increased disability allowances, improved legislation and enhanced funding of biomedical research. Like the only other monograph on this subject, by the neurologist-historian T Jock Murray, Talley’s begins with the emergence of MS from the disease category paraplegia, the nature and location of Jean-Martin Charcot’s studies, and the numerous attempts to explain the cause, occurrence and course of MS. Much of this is familiar. Murray’s focus was upon physicians and scientists, whereas Talley brings to the fore the social and cultural context. In the latter half of the book Talley approaches the history of the illness experience. Based on the medical literature and patient records (from hospitals in New York and Los Angeles, and Tracy Jackson Putnam’s private practice), his argument is that despite equivocal evidence, physicians, encouraged by their patients, have been therapeutic activists. Talley also asserts that the (American) National Multiple Sclerosis Society put MS on medical, public, political and philanthropic maps, and to great effect. MS research funding boomed. He continues with a review of the secondary literature of disabilities studies, premised on a social model perspective of disability, to make his case for the role of the political economy in enhancing the experience of disability. In particular he highlights the inherent historical bias against the young and female disabled. In the penultimate chapter Talley brings his historically informed argument to the biomedical politics of today. With his customary plain English, he weaves together the science of an auto-immunity framework, an explanation of how interferon(s) modulate the immune system, and an analysis of where and with whose money this basic and applied science was carried out. Talley explores the long trajectories of MS contingent upon collective and political construction, avoiding esoteric language and swathes of methodologies from the scientific, social science and history disciplines. From his introductory medical description of MS through to a succinct explanation of grounded theory and a closing reiteration of the potentialities of reframing (an auto-immunity) paradigm, his argument throughout is clear. Some, however, may take issue with his selection of sources. His comparative discussion of European MS societies is based on two secondary literature articles. His assessment of national contribution to the “advances in the understanding of MS as an autoimmune disease” by way of numbers of laboratories and clinics identified in “seventy-seven key studies” is problematic (pp. 112–13). On this basis, the UK MS Society, which began funding fellowships in 1954 and to date has directed over £75 million to research, was not an identifiable financier of any advance. Consideration of Interferon: the science and selling of a miracle drug by Toine Pieters (2005) could have broadened the perspective here. The opening line, “We are at a point of great hope” (p. 133) in Talley’s concluding chapter will raise eyebrows. But he is on a mission. One that is well crafted and heartfelt.