Darwin's theory of evolution. Essay review.

national survey of drug addiction undertaken in Britain until the recent past. It is not only a point of departure for an understanding of modern British drug policy, but it is a culmination of certain nineteenth-century trends. Most significantly, the Rolleston Committee Report marks the political triumph of the "medical model" of drug addiction in Britain. However, that success was not inevitable. If Malcolm Delevingne, of the Home Office, had had his way, British drug policy would have very closely resembled American drug policy, which was based on a "criminal model" of addiction. The triumph of the medical model, then, is not just a story of medical ideology but of political struggle. Without this twentieth-century conclusion, Griffith Edwards' thoughtful essay on 'The nineteenth century in relation to the present' is punctured by anomalies. In explaining why British drug policy differs from American drug policy surely a vital question to most readers Edwards makes only cryptic references to the Dangerous Drugs Act and the Rolleston Committee Report. But one cannot understand the Victorian contribution to modern British drug policy without a full discussion of the mediating role of these developments of the 1920s. Despite these reservations, I believe that Berridge and Edwards have written an illuminating book which is invaluable to historians, particularly those interested in the social history of medicine. Terry M. Parssinen Department of History Temple University, Philadelphia