The Victorian girl and the feminine ideal

poor was already rampant. Alleviation (beyond rather ineffective policing laws) was, in Northern Germany, primarily in the hands of private philanthropy and protestant clergymen. Dr Weidmann surveys the establishment of poor relief in Hamburg, Oldenburg, Prague, Vienna, Hanover, Frankfurt/Main, and Berlin, with specific attention to the care of the sick poor. She shows that an effective system of care evolved, particularly in Hamburg, through a combination of house calls by appointed physicians, and/or treatment by surgeons, mid-wives, and (where necessary) attendants to the sick. Only rarely were poor patients admitted to hospital. The exceptions were the institutions where care of the sick poor was coupled with medical teaching (for example: the Charite in Berlin). Neither the medical care nor the remedies (prescriptions could be filled only at designated chemist-apothecaries) cost the poor any money. The question of who was eligible for these benefits was solved by a system of recommendations: according to the amount of money given by benefactors, a number of written recommendations (neatly filed and later used in reports) of those both destitute and ill could be referred to specially appointed physicians. It is precisely at this point that one becomes aware of the structural intricacy of this system (not elaborated upon by the author): private philanthropy maintained the care of the sick poor, while the organization and administration lay in the hands of the doctors, the clergy (who usually recommended the poor because the donors could not always name them), and a representative of city government. Churches were highly involved, the state only insofar as laws and stipulations governed medical practice, appointments, and drug production. Financially the state gave little or nothing. In the pattern of its care for the sick poor, the late eighteenthand early nineteenth-century physicians (like Daniel Nootnagell and C. W. Hufeland) were innovative; structurally, however, the traditional supports of the poor and the sick were still in place: private philanthropy and religious institutions. Dr Weidmann has many interesting details for those interested in the organized care of the sick poor. I have not touched on her presentation of the official lists of remedies for those under care, nor upon the extremely interesting financial position of the apothecaries. Her book has a good bibliography, an index, several tables, and a list of archival sources (Hamburg, Oldenburg, Brunswick). It remains inadequate primarily in the dimension of economic and ideological explanation (the "Enlightenment" is not a blanket prescription for change). Nor are the poor and their medical and social ills given colour: they are, as seems usually the case in such books, vague masses medically administered. Nonetheless, quite a number of people tried to care. Johanna Geyer-Kordesch University of Munster