Howard Florey. Penicillin and after

surprisingly, this high-resolution history, which focuses more often than not on the practice of science rather than on science as a system of thought, has produced several new explanatory models: science was practised to legitimate a rising social class of marginal men; it functioned as a shibboleth of radical politics; it was used by the ruling elite to preserve its hegemony; it provided a channel for upward social mobility; etc. To be sure, economic utility had a formative influence on scientific activity too, as Paul Weindling argues in his study of the short-lived British Mineralogicial Society. But Jack Morell shows how even in such an avowedly utilitarian set-up as that of the Geological and Polytechnic Society of the West Riding of Yorkshire the ornamental function of geological knowledge came to dominate its economic interest. Local conflicts, as distinct from national divides, were also a moulding condition. Steven Shapin stresses the peculiar position of Edinburgh as a "provincial metropolis" where the Combeites formed an alliance with the lesser bourgeoisie which nurtured local cultural ambitions. And Derek Orange examines the significance of the personality of William Turner and his Calvinist dissenting convictions for the Newcastle Literary and Philosphical Society. In their emphasis on science as a cultural activity, many historians tend to ignore "great scientists" and "great universities" in favour of marginal men, dissenters, radicals, phrenologists, minor naturalists, the lesser institutions and societies, and the outright "failures". The further a case study can be found away from any establishmentarian apex, the more earnestly its explanatory value for the development of science will be argued. As an antidote to the earlier "great men" tradition, this is wholly good, but the new orthodoxy should not become an equal extreme of the opposite. Fortunately, there is balance in this volume. Michael Neve's essay on scientific Bristol (1820-60) makes it clear that in the West Country science was not the property of marginal men, but the achievement of the well-established, predominantly Anglican bourgeoisie acting in alliance with the Oxbridge elite and with a metropolitan conservative culture a la Peel. Two contributions in this collection are of particular interest to the historian of medicine. Both use the notion that scientific expertise functioned to consolidate or increase the social prestige of the medical profession. Roy MacLeod concludes from a study of the reform movement in the Royal Society (1830-48) that the scientific and medical establishments recognized the importance of "philosophical" excellence as a means to justify their social status. And M. Durey shows that during the cholera epidemic of 1831-32, individual practitioners came through the crisis with enhanced prestige, but that the profession as a whole failed to do so. Also of medical interest is J. N. Hays's valuable account of the London "lecturing empire" (1800-50); London scientific life was dominated by the lecture, and much of the freelance lecturing was aimed at the medical students; as medical education became more formalized, so the scientific lecturing became more institutionalized.