Annales de démographie historique 1973. Enfant et sociétés

excellent account of the general scene at Glasgow and Edinburgh, against which the pioneering work of Cullen, whose chemical doctrines are considered in Part One, and of Black, took place. This was part of a remarkable phase of Scottish culture when the advancement of science was of both philosophical and practical concern. Thus science, economics and technology found common ground in philosophy which was of great moment to Scottish society. Edinburgh was the centre of this endeavour, which in part accounts for the remarkable progress and stature of the Medical School then and later, when chemistry was becoming an essential topic for medical students to be acquainted with. Dr. Donovan has provided us with an important contribution to the analysis of eighteenth-century Scottish science and medicine, its origins and the factors influencing it, drawn against the background of the Scottish Enlightenment. It deserves wide attention, and it is to be hoped that others will be stimulated to examine in the same scholarly detail the many other problems of this general topic which await consideration. Since 1964 the Societe de Demographie Historique, which has its headquarters in Paris, has published its proceedings each year. This number first appeared in 1973 and is now reprinted, indicating an increasing interest in its important topic. There are forty communications, ranging in size from large articles such as the one by R. Etienne on 'La conscience medicale antique et la vie des enfants' together with the discussion generated (pp. 15-61), to the brief presentation of documents like that of F.-Y. Le Moigne on 'Remede infaillible contre les vers des enfants' (p. 394). The arrangement is chronological: antiquity, the Middle Ages (including a paper on the attitude of the Church), seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the nineteenth century (here Peter Laslett's paper on 'L'attitude a 1'egard de l'enfant dans l'Angleterre du XIXe siecle, d'apres les sources litteraires, politiques et juridiques', pp. 313-318, should be noted; of great value also is A. Armengaud's 'L'attitude de la soci6t6 a l'egard de l'enfant au XIXe siecle. Elements de bibliographie' (pp. 345-352). Each article is a scholarly contribution with full documentation and often containing tables, graphs and illustrations; the bibliography to the papers covers pp. 433 to 479. The French school of historical demography has been the pioneer in this field and it demonstrates in this collection that it is still the foremost. There is here a great deal of …