American medicine and statistical thinking, 1800—1860

well-known study of English ecclesiastical thought on social questions, was clearly in an ideal position to investigate the campaigns and ruminations on fertility in this period, and he has done the job with exemplary thoroughness and care. It is possibly to be regretted that the author did not highlight the peculiarities of the English debate on these questions by reference to more European and American writing. To do so would be to define demography as a system less of social biology and statistics than of social thought and rhetoric, bearing the distinctive hallmarks of very different national cultures. That task remains to be done.