Dutch medical biography. A biographical dictionary of Dutch physicians and surgeons 1475–1975

the work of H.M. Collins, Bruno Latour, Karin Knorr, Augustine Brannigan, Andrew Pickering, Steve Woolgar, et al.). What this enterprise most notably lacks is clear evidence of editorial vision and grip. There is no very obvious sense of what the book was intended to do, what criteria of inclusion and exclusion were imposed, what audience it was designed for. Why was technology systematically treated in one chapter only, when the wisest strategy might have been to do the job properly or not at all? Why were the earth sciences given such short shrift? More fundamentally, the editors do not seem unambiguously to have told their authors whether their task was prescriptive (this is what the history of science ought to be) or descriptive (this is how, in fact, it is). Nor do they seem to have decided whether the book was to concentrate on the subject-matter of the history of science, or on its historiography. Some of the chapters focus on the first; some on the second; and some reflect confusion about the nature of their brief. It is hard to imagine that Corsi and Weindling's book will become the standard reference guide to the field; it is too quirky and uneven. For that purpose a combination of W.F. Bynum et al. (editors), Dictionary ofthe history ofscience, and Paul T. Durbin (editor),A guide to the culture ofscience, technology, and medicine would be far better. Nevertheless, many of the chapters can be read with benefit, and even though few historians will feel the necessity of having their own copy, it will be useful to have access to one.