St Mark's Hospital, London. A social history of a specialist hospital

scientists in Cambridge and elsewhere, it played a significant role in the progress of science, and in the development of industrial measurement and medical instrumentation. It is a story worth telling and of some historical significance. The book is the product not of a professional historian but of two former employees who clearly share the affection for the company that seems to have been characteristic of its staff. Wolfe became Company Secretary and Cattermole Technical Manager, so they are well qualified to write about both business and technical matters. The title gives a good indication of the emphasis of the book. It is mainly about Darwin and the company, and the instruments it made at Cambridge during his tenure. The other major figure in the company's history, R. S. Whipple, does not feature so strongly. Nor is there much about the London end of the company, acquired in 1919 when it combined with R. W. Paul's business to become the Cambridge and Paul Instrument Company and later the Cambridge Instrument Company. In part, this reflects the bias of the surviving records now held in Cambridge University Library. The forty years from Darwin's death in 1928 to the end of the company's independent existence are covered in a single chapter. There is another story to be told, of the later years in detail and of the subsequent mergers, but this would need another volume. The book is in two parts, the first and longer part giving the history of the company, and the second, by Cattermole alone, containing short accounts of ten important instruments made by the company, beginning with Darwin's famous rocking microtome. These accounts are a little disappointing, giving too much general historical information instead of concentrating on the development of the instruments by the company. The longest, and one of the most satisfactory, is about the electrocardiograph, the company's major contribution to medical instrumentation. Inevitably, the book will not meet all the needs of the serious student, but it does provide pointers to further information. The price, though reasonable by current standards, will deter casual purchasers, which is a pity because it is a book worth reading. The history of hospitals has, until comparatively recent times, been represented by histories of buildings and the men (the word is used advisedly) who administered, supported, and-most prominently-practised in them. More recently, general historians have turned their attention to these healing …