Closer to Thatshared Byeighteenth-Century Project, By

Book Reviews volume by Vincent Barras and Louis- that the exclusive focus on Jurine tended to Courvoisier, La medecine des lumie'res undermine the explicit purpose of the joint (2000), a study of the famous Lausanne project, by allotting insufficient attention to physician Samuel-Andre-Auguste-David Jurine's dependency on networks of clients, Tissot. scientific peers, and particular social groups. The revival of interest in an individual Jurine's public life during this period, which such as Jurine is thus symptomatic of a encompassed intense upheaval and recent surge of activity in the history of revolution as Geneva's sovereignty shifted Swiss French medicine. Although during the 1790s and 1800s, is rapidly contributors acknowledge that Jurine's fame passed over with the comment that the during his lifetime was a product of his surgeon was not very politically active. As a surgical expertise, the majority of the papers result, the dramatic effects that such shifts treat Jurine's natural historical work, could have upon the possibilities opening ranging from meticulous studies of his up for someone like Jurine in this period-a collection and the role of systematics in his bourgeois rather than a patrician member of classificatory work to individual treatments the oligarchy, a surgeon rather than a high- of specific fields of interest, from bats, status physician-are under-emphasized. An insects, freshwater crustaceans and fish to opportunity is thereby lost of documenting the formation of mountains and monsters. the relations between scientific or medical Jurine is revealed as a successor to a natural status, political transformation and the historical tradition of painstaking production of the history of medicine and experimental and observational practice, science. The reasons for Jurine's changing begun in Geneva by Charles Bonnet, in reputation should be sought not in his own which the study of animal design and pronouncements but in a broader story of function revealed Providential forethought, the respective status of surgery, medicine economy and harmony. Marc Ratcliff and natural history. Jurine's transformation argues that Jurine's model of function was of surgical wealth into natural historical closer to that shared by eighteenth-century specimens, of surgical skill into natural medical practitioners than to the new historical expertise and fame, is however comparative anatomy of Cuvier and only obliquely addressed in the volume. Parisian naturalists. Rene Sigrist and This not insignificant example shows that Patrick Bungener show that he differed this book raises unanswered questions in from such individuals in other ways-rather the history of eighteenth-century science than adopting the natural method whole- and medicine. heartedly, he continued to view debates over classification in operational terms, with a E C Spary, pragmatic caution about systems and University of Cambridge theories. His diversity as a naturalist was supported both by his skill as a dissector, acquired in surgical training, and by the artistic assistance of his daughter Christine. Silvano Montaldo, Medici e societta. The contributors are at pains to remark Bartolomeo Sella nel Piemonte dell'ottocento, that their enterprise is not one of restoring publication of Comitato di Torini Jurine to a rightful place in the history of dell'Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento Swiss medicine. Rather, they ask why Italiana, Turin, Carocci Editore, 1998, Jurine's fame declined so rapidly, and raise pp. 360 (paperback 88430-1091-3). the question of how Jurine's different experimental, practical and theoretical Bartolomeo Sella (1776-1829) spent his enterprises interrelated. Here, however, I felt medical career in the commune of Mosso

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Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 24 Sep 2021 at 16:51:09, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025727300069842 Book Reviews Santa Maria, in the province of Biella, an and political life in Mosso. Elected Alpine valley in the Piedmont. But this president of the commune in 1808, Sella provincial physician lived at a crossroads, became a "notabile" and used his power and geographically, historically and influence-which extended long after the intellectually. Between Italy and France, Napoleonic era-to advance reformist goals between Revolution and Restoration, in public health and sanitation. But his between Enlightenment and Positivism, liberal views also led to conflict within his Sella fully engaged in all of these currents in family. his time. The son of a well-known and The third and fourth sections of the wealthy local family, Sella's role in the book deal with Sella's medical practice. community was more prominent than that Here we see fully the intersection, or of the usual local physician. In this excellent maybe collision, between Enlightenment study, Silvano Montaldo exploits a trove of science and traditional culture, the manuscript materials, including letters and development of the "medicalization" of local documents, to explore Sella's life and modern society and the role of the times amid the turbulent setting of physician in the process of modernization. Napoleonic Piedmont. As an elite physician, Sella's clientele Montaldo investigates four aspects of a included, as we might expect, the upper medical life in this era. The first section of classes and the bourgeoisie, but he was the book looks at the intellectual setting. also, by custom and by conviction, From the particulars of Sella's family obligated to care for the poor as well. background, Montaldo moves on to a The manuscript Cartolaro of Sella's broader look at the intellectual background prescriptions is used to give an excellent of Torino and Pavia, the major intellectual insight into his everyday practice, and centres of the Piedmont. This corner of bears comparison with the work of Italy, Switzerland and Savoy was a centre of Gianna Pomata, David Gentilcore, and Jansenist thought, and Montaldo explains Barbara Duden for an earlier period, as how Sella's particular intellectual well as to Matthew Ramsey's work on background, which included Jansenism, France. The changing role of Christianity freemasonry, and Enlightenment science, and the role of popular and folkloric against the political upheaval of the French medicine are well integrated into Revolution, led him to "scientific Montaldo's analysis and his chapter on Jacobinism". This combined materialism, sexuality and marriage is especially good. anticlericalism, political radicalism, and Montaldo's account of Bartolomeo Sella civic engagement with the idea that adds some important qualifications to the science-in this case medical science-could historiographical model of medical be a force for social reform. At the medical professionalization, which has stressed faculty in Pavia, Sella encountered the ideas changes in medical education and theory as of both John Brown and Johann Peter the most important factors. Montaldo's Frank, as well as a heady mixture of close attention to the local setting reveals political and philosophical ideas. Montaldo that the culture and economic system of the makes two important points: that there community also have much to do with the were considerable regional differences in physician's role and influence at the local scientific thought in this period, and that level. It is to be hoped that this important the ambition of medical science to reform book will be translated into English to society did not die with the restoration of reach a wider readership. the monarchy in 1814. In the second section of his book, Anita Guerrini, Montaldo looks at Sella's particular social University of California, Santa Barbara

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