Legal medicine in history

enthusiast's reading of the literature. It might be more accurate to suggest that Wellcome had an inordinate respect for scholarship (which for him always meant "scientific" study) rather than thwarted talents in this regard. Interestingly he appears to have been less directive of the scientific work closer to his own field which was carried out for the business or at the innovative research institutes which he founded. Here he was willing to give scientists a freer rein, and his talent scouting was sometimes (though not always) rewarded with men of the calibre of Henry Dale. As this biography makes clear, Wellcome's own talent lay in business acumen and, at least in early and middle life, in that attribute known as "vision"'-a sense of what might be achieved and how to go about achieving it. It is perhaps as a great facilitator that he is most accurately assessed, both in his own lifetime and subsequently. The business and other institutions he put in place now support an inordinate amount of research work by medical scientists and provide the international mainstay of scholarly work in the history of medicine. A full exploration of how and why he was able to attain his achievements of course requires more than biographical study. The social, political and economic climates of his American birthplace and his adopted British milieu during his lifetime are clearly germane. However, this readable and authoritative work has much to offer on Wellcome the man, and will undoubtedly become the definitive "life".