Rheumatic fever in America and Britain: a biological, epidemiological, and medical history

This is a book swarming with anachronism among which are a complaint about bad spelling allegedly common at the time (p. 9), the observations that Darwin's work reveals his potential to be the "first male feminist" (p. 167) (a particular obsession to which King-Hele often returns), that Darwin was "ahead of his time" in seizing on the rapid growth rates of cannabis which, ifmade into paper, might reduce British timber imports (p. 253), and (among the best) Darwin's interest in the intrepid aeronauts who launched balloons and thus transformed their adventures into a prognostication of the "inter-planetary flights of the 1970s and after" (p. 187). Likewise, King-Hele assumes much about the talents ofJames Watt, one of Darwin's closest friends. Among the Lunar Society, Darwin and Watt were both regarded as inventors of much technical genius, but the notion that Watt was essentially "an engineer and not a chemist" (p. 154) is unsustainable. Both Watt and Darwin had many chemical enthusiasms. In Watt's case these were revealed in his own associations with Dr Thomas Beddoes and their search for a chemical means of curing consumption. Similarly, Darwin's interest in electrotherapy is overdrawn here. Darwin's concerns were that ofmany physicians desperate to alleviate the suffering of their patients. As the author of Zoonomia, Darwin is here given kudos for the apparent "prediction of the future importance of electricity, at a time when it was thought of only as a toy" (p. 290). In fact, many then championed electricity as a useful therapeutic, among them Darwin's friend Thomas Beddoes. Similarly, Darwin's apparent biological disciple, Dr Robert Thornton, was also a great London practitioner of pneumatic medicine. There are many disappointments in this book which, while full of insights into Darwin's domestic politics, tells us surprisingly little of a man known as a notorious democrat and who counted among his friends many proponents of republicanism. Much mention is also made of James Keir, for example, but nothing of his politics. Indeed, such views mattered as Joseph Priestley discovered to his dismay when a Birmingham mob destroyed his house and laboratory. Likewise, Darwin apparently shared democratic sensibilities with Josiah Wedgwood and with the radical Beddoes. But those looking for insight here will find a historiographical naivete which proposes the Lunar Society member Thomas Day as "the most political" of the group (p. 115). This is surely a stunning revelation amongst a group including Keir and Priestley. Likewise, it is surprising to learn that the origin of the Priestley riots was never clarified, which proposition seems to ignore not only Keir's published views but those of historians like John Money. Nevertheless, it is clear that Darwin did share the radical views of many of his contemporaries notably that, after the French Revolution degenerated, America appeared the only safe place. Certainly, this was a view sustained by the emigration of Priestley among many others. Many, however, stayed and took the risks of Painite repression. It is certainly not the case, as King-Hele asserts, that Beddoes kept out of politics. If anything, he continued to publish pamphlets and challenged the laws banning so-called seditious gatherings. King-Hele writes neither for historians of science nor of medicine but rather for "modern nonmedical readers" (p. 289). Apparently so.