Archives of the British chemical industry 1750–1914: a handlist

red-making for tender trainees. But psychiatry without scientific toughness lapses quickly into jargon and belief. Compared to the Lewis-Shepherd system ofclean and logical questioning, the harangues of anti-psychiatrists (whether dressed up as politicians, sociologists, historians or special interest groups) are messily bewildering and often trample tender buds. Certainly this volume is aimed at representing a harder school ofpsychiatry, concentrating on the nomothetic rather than the idiographic approach. Freud is mentioned hardly at all, and then as an historical figure. History itself is well served by Jean Starobinski, William Bynum, and Michael MacDonald, although Klerman and Weissman's review of anxiety disorders insists on asserting the Foucaultian notion ofmental illness as "an 'invention' of the Enlightenment". The social sciences are well represented, in particular by Annette Lawson's piece, wherein she calls for the "epidemiologist who can incorporate the best of sociological theorizing" and "the sociologist or social anthropologist who maintains always a critical and sceptical eye". A section on 'The evaluation of psychiatric intervention' is nicely divided into 'Specific treatment approaches' and 'Service organization', with David Watt's sensible outline of institutional psychiatry showing that evaluation in this area has been dilatory and that community care is equally lacking in coherent direction. Perhaps the clearest message of this collection is that, despite its broad scope and detailed investigations, the epidemiological approach is a tortuous and demanding path. Interviews, schedules, trials, data, and statistics throng the pages, and yet so little is known for certain. By contrast much that is thought to be "known" has been discounted, and such solid unglamorous work remains the backbone of contemporary psychiatric research. The "English sceptical" line of succession, deriving from Henry Maudsley, and transmitted via Mott, Lewis, and Shepherd, is well served in this book.