the development of the historiography of Book Review Section imperial medicine. This, we learn, is com- posed of four sequential and overlapping layers: the heroic era, the age of the participant-historian, the rise of the history Compiled by John Jenkin* of epidemic disease, and finally the revision- ist phase which seeks to specify medicine's value as an agent of social control. Exemp- Roy MacLeod and Milton Lewis (Eds), Dis- lars of this latest genre, the book's fifteen ease, Medicine, and Empire: Perspectives on essays are clustered into three sections Western Medicine and the Experience of which address medical policy and adminis- European Expansion. London: Routledge, tration, professionalization, and the politics 1988. xii + 339pp., $106. of race and epidemic disease. Michael Worboys opens the first section The emphasis of this volume on the history with a reconsideration of the rivalry of colonial medicine in the nineteenth and between the twin godfathers of British trop- twentieth centuries falls on the political, cul- ical medicine, Patrick Manson and Ronald tural, economic and social dimensions of Ross. The essay is a rich blend of insti- medical practice. In terms of scope, the focus tutional, political and medical history, and is most often on the activities of physicians Worboys links the tensions between the two and public health reformers in the British men to the divergent professional pressures dominions, but a few essayists range farther operating on the entrepreneurial Ross, a afield to provide snapshots of contempor- scientific and political outsider who directed aneous developments in the Belgian Congo, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Algeria, Indochina, the German islands of and on Manson, the collegial head of the Lon- the Pacific and the Philippines. As a collec- don School of Tropical Medicine who gained tion of studies in retrospective policy analy- the ear of the Colonial Office. sis, the volume provides a sumptuous The divergent styles of imperial medicine sampler of recent attempts to relate the his- are brought into focus in Raeburn Lange's tory of medicine to the retention and devel- piece on the establishment of a health ser- opment of the European colonies. The book's vice in the Cook Islands, and in Wolfgang goals are both modest and ambitious; modest Eckart's contribution to the history of Ger- because the editors have wisely decided that man medical services in the Caroline, they cannot be exhaustive-in coverage. Thus Mariana and Marshall Islands. Cook Island there is little mention of how indigenous natives, some of them trained in western healers reacted to medicalization by Euro- medicine by the Central Medical School in pean physicians. The collection is ambitious Fiji, gained limited access to European medi- because the editors have produced a collec- cine after New Zealand organized medical tion of case studies which carries the reader services. Paternalism and perhaps humani- well beyond the descriptive, physician- tarian motives informed New Zealand's centred history that abounds in this corner medicalization of the islands, and by Lange's of the subject and approaches their goal of account the natives experienced a real gain lending coherence to 'the agenda' of those in well-being. Eckart chronicles a very dif- who study colonial medicine. ferent story in the German Protectorates, Readers who expect this book to provide where commercial ventures formed to an analytical model to conceptualize the export copra, rubber and phosphate ruth- relationship between medicine and empire lessly exploited the natives. The Pacific was will be disappointed. Perhaps the history of a medical backwater for Germany, which colonial medicine is, as yet, too inchoate to concentrated its efforts on the health situ- hazard the sorts of schematic models already ation in Africa and New Guinea. Eckart, proposed for colonial science and technology whose mastery of the archives is evident, by MacLeod, George Basalla, Immanuel has pieced together a chilling tale of medical Wallerstein, Lewis Pyenson, Ian Inkster, neglect from scant manuscript evidence. Daniel Headrick and others. Yet editor Anne Marcovich devotes her energies to a MacLeod's penchant for analytic models is comparison of French medical intervention alive and well in the volume's introduction, in Algeria and Indochina. This derivative where it manifests itself as a lucid account of essay, based solely on printed sources, relies heavily on the work of Yvonne Turin and Bruno Latour. Although her study of * Dr J.G. Jenkin is a Reader in Physics at La Trobe Indochina shows that old-style sanitary University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083. measures continued well into the present century, it divides the history of French col- Historical Records ofAustralian Science 8 (I), (December 1989) onial medicine into pre- and post-Pasteur HistoricblRecords ofAustralian Science, Volume 8, Number 1 phases and overstates the influence of the Asians and local marketplace conditions microbial theory of disease on the practice of combined to bolster quarantine strategies in colonial medicine. The translation is not Victoria and New South Wales. He also reads Marcovich's own, and the original French the history of the epidemics as a series of version of the paper may have contained a opportunities for social and cultural control more nuanced account of these important which were seized upon by the urban bour- events. geois. These elite historical actors, Mayne Three of the five essays in section two, argues, blamed the victims of smallpox for those authored by Donald Denoon, Diana their own diseased condition, and used the Dyason and Helen Woolcock, speak to the circumstance of the epidemic to restrict the1 Australian experience. Dennon's article on sphere of state action and to win concessions the relationship between medicine and set- for private enterprise. All this is heady stuff ,I tler capitalism shows how medical adminis- the best of class analysis. Historians of epi- tration in Australasia and South Africa was demiology are sure to note that the rhetoric. subordinated to political purposes. His suc- employed in the 1880s is not so different1 cinct section on the differential reception from similar liturgies generated by the pre- and reordering of western medical ideas in sent scourge of AIDS. temperate Victoria and New Zealand, the Editor Lewis focuses on the strategies to near-tropical environs of Queensland, and promote infant health in New South Wales, the exclusively tropical climes of New which arose in response to the documen- Guinea and Papua lays the foundation for tation of declining birth rates for colonists integrating the history of medical policy and various fears for the health of the white with the ecology of disease. This piece, more race that swept Europe and the colonies in than any other in the collection, will figure the nineteenth and early twentieth cen- on the must-read lists for those who aspire to turies. While Australia shared the concerns Tashion a global agenda for the historiogra- of Europe, Lewis identifies the regional phy of colonial medicine. Queensland pressures of a strong nationalist ideology receives additional attention from and fear of Japanese expansionism as the Woolcock, who explores attitudes toward major inspirations for Australia's infant health by examining alien labour policies welfare movement and general campaign to and the oft-repeated claim that Queens- increase the continent's white population. land's salubrious climate posed no barrier to Lewis writes from a global perspective, and demographic and economic progress. explores numerous parallel developments Australasian scholars already know that from countries in both hemispheres. Diana Dyason is serious about an active The health of Africans is the concern of retirement, and we the readers profit from two articles in the final section. Maryinez her portrait of medical professionalization Lyons' study of the development of a policy in Victoria. of sleeping sickness control in the Belgian With the loss of Erwin Ackerknecht, Congo chronicles the deployment of a William Coleman and Jacques Leonard, his- paternalistic sanitary strategy designed to torians of demography and epidemic disease protect the profits of the colonizers and only may feel rather glum about the last two secondarily the health of native rubber col- years. But cheer up, for most likely these lectors. This account - of massive surveys, scholars would have taken an interest in and attempts at containment, and medical pass- appreciated the scholarship in the final sec- ports - is enlivened by an analysis of the pol- tion of this volume. itical factors that drove King Leopold I1 to The chapter by Alan Mayne is top-rate seek help from the Liverpool School of Trop- social history and employs the smallpox epi- ical Medicine in stopping the epidemic. His- demics of 1881-2 as a lens to examine vari- torians of colonization have grown critical of ous dimensions of the economic and cultural the term 'scramble' to describe the late nine- dependency that bound the communities of teenth century expansion of Europe into Sydney and Melbourne to the mother coun- Africa, but the imagery of competitive try. The health policies enacted on the per- scramble still lingers, perhaps rightly so, in iphery took as their reference point the much of our scholarship. Yet the use of experience of smallpox in the London slums. foreign experts by colonial authorities, in But colonial sanitary authorities were more instances such as the Belgian case or Robert than passive conduits of British cultural Koch's African expeditions, deserves closer imperatives, and they altered British poli- scrutiny. By 1900, tropical medicine was an cies to fit their local situations. For example, international field, replete with a coterie of quarantine practices, which had fallen out of expert consultants. Medical expertise favour in Britain by the 1880s, persisted became a kind of commodity which could be somewhat longer on the borders of empire. bought, sold and sometimes copied by Mayne shows how racial prejudice toward foreign governments. Historians of science 40 Book Review Section and imperialism need to press beyond the begun a major work on the seaweeds of competkive metaphor, where appropriate, North America, Neveis boreali-americana, and consider instances where Euro~eansof for the Smithsonian Institution. He remained different nationalities collaborate; in the away from his posts as Keeper of the Her- exploitation and development of the non- barium at Trinity College, Dublin and the European world. Chair of Botany of the Royal Dublin Society While many of the authors examine racial until October 1856. In that period he trav- attitudes in relationship to colonial health elled via Gibraltar, overland to Suez, to care, this theme is given a cogent currency by Ceylon, to Albany and the Swan River, and to Shula Marks and Neil Anderson in their Victoria, Tasmania and Sydney, from where essay on typhus and social control in South he made a side excursion to the South Africa. The South African strategy to deal Pacific, calling at Auckland, Tonga and Fiji. with typhus, if strategy is an appropriate From Sydney he went to Valparaiso and description, was designed to contain the dis- home. In each location at which he stopped ease in the rural black areas and protect the he collected algae, for his own herbarium health of the white population. This strategy and for sale to subscribers, thus partly off- was all the more insidious because typhus, setting the cost of his voyage. During his like the greatest killers of Africans - travels he wrote frequent letters home, and measles, tuberculosis, malnutrition and these have now been collected in this selec- deficiency diseases, tends to receive much ted edition. less attention in the international press than Unlike the reader of a complete correspon- the more spectacular afflictions such as dence, such as that now being published for AIDS and plague. Moreover, the health of Charles Darwin or under preparation for native Africans received an additional blow Ferdinand von Mueller, readers of selections when South Africa ceded responsibility for such as this must depend on the editor for the African health care to the inexperienced and context, cross-referencing and interpret- impoverished Bantustan health authorities. ation that could otherwise be gained from a Historians are not known for their una- full corpus. The support given to the reader nimity of methods and subjects, and it is who is not steeped in algological literature apparent that 'the agenda' has not yet and who has not had privileged access to the emerged. Nonetheless, this provocative col- corpus of Harvey's letters is an important lection provides several valuable tools for component in judging this edition. In choos- the construction and refinement of our vari- ing letters leading up to the voyage, and ous agendas. The editors are to be congratu- those dealing with the distribution of the col- lated for assembling a. sensitive cultural lection and the publication of Phycologia critique of many manifestations of colonial australica - in which Harvey illustrated his medicine, and chided for leaving sections of collection with his own lithographs, Ducker the manuscript in German. The volume is as has served us well. We are able to follow distant from idiosyncratic history as it is Harvey's planning, and indeed excitement, from dull prose, and it is especially rec- about his 'long cherished plan of foreign ommended to those historians concerned travel which will leave me something to with the professional, administrative and dwell on for the time to come, and serve to sociopolitical dimensions of European medi- give useful and leas ant occupation for the cine, both in Europe proper and in the rest of my me (W.H.H. to Mrs Asa Gray, 14 Southern Hemisphere. April 1853). By this device we are allowed to see, in Harvey's own letters, a rounded view Michael A. Osborne, of the planning, execution and resolution of History Department, the journey. (Each letter used is printed in University of California, Santa Barbara. full, with Harvey's punctuation, spelling and asides.) Ducker's introduction fills in essen- Sophie C. Ducker (Ed.), The Contented Bot- tial background to Harvey's early years: the anist: Letters of W.H. Harvey aboutAustralia role of Sir William Hooker in getting him and the Pacific. Melbourne: Melbourne Uni- started on his botanical studies and his brief versity Press/Miegunyah, 1988. xvi + 413 period in the Cape of Good Hope as assistant pp., 20 plates, $65.95. to his brother Joseph, the Colonial Treasurer, as well as the origins of his On 4 August 1853, William Henry Harvey American connection, which has led to the (1811-1866) departed from Southampton preservation of many of these letters in the for a long-planned voyage to Australia, to Gray Herbarium at Harvard. Similarly, she collect algae. Harvey had, by that time, pub- sketches the final years of Harvey's life, his lished major works on the algae of Ireland marriage and death. and of Britain more generally, Nereis Although it is not clear whether there are australis (algae of the South Ocean), and had any letters written during the voyage that Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Volume 8, Number 1 have not been selected for inclusion, it Pelagonium solely from herbarium speci- appears to be a very full, if not complete set mens. We learn of the frustration of collect- for the period of the journey itself. The ing algae, when one has only a limited time at coverage of his journey up to his illness in each locality and needs to wait for storms to Valparaiso is without gaps, for example, so produce a strong drift, of the frustration of that it would be possible to determine his missing flowering periods, and of the diffi- whereabouts for almost every day from the culties of collecting, preserving and process- time he reached Ceylon up until his stay in ing in the field. the English hospital at Valparaiso. For the botanical historian, then, these This precision of record is possible mainly selected letters provide a quarry for snip- because Harvey wrote long 'Journal' letters pets of data, for contemporary insights, and to his family - particularly to his sister and for illustrative quotation. But they are a his niece. These letters contain observations quarry with much overburden, and for this on convicts, on social conditions ('the purpose the index is satisfactory if one uses fashion here is, to have no servants' - W.H.H. it creatively. The volume is not densely to Mrs Gray, 2 February 1854, from Albany, indexed, however, and is not as potent a tool W.A.), on government, mission work, land as the index to the Correspondence of settlement and general living conditions, as Charles Darwin, which makes much greater well as touching on botanical matters and use of conceptual indexing in addition to giving descriptions of landscapes written locating references to specific people, places with a botanist's eye. Letters to the Hookers and species. Moreover, for the reader who and other botanists have more botanical wishes to use the collection for general social detail, but, except for some letters to Asa history, the index is much less satisfactory: Gray written after Darwin's Origin of it seems to have been prepared with a botan- Species was published, do no more than ical user in mind. This is a great pity, for the touch on theoretical matters. Perhaps this is letters will be much harder to use than they not surprising since, as Ducker points out, might have been, and useful views on social 'he proposed no great new hypothesis; he conditions, on the administration of govern- presented no new theories; he discovered no ment, and on French, American and British new laws, and found no new stars in the Uni- competition for Pacific influence will not be verse.' Yet there is value here for botanical easy to follow up for want of some general, historians, and for those interested in the first-level index entries. development of botanical networks. There are other frustrations with the Harvey was a well established botanist, scholarly apparatus. End-notes are usually judged by the Hookers of Kew to be a very helpful, but at other times they seem sufficiently sound general botanist to be redundant. For example, on p.232, when given, with Sonder, the responsibility for the Harvey is describing his stay in Auckland, Flora capensis (1860-65), one of the series we find the passage 'Capt. D, took me to of colonial Floras sponsored by the Colonial Rangitoto13, a curious volcanic island form- Office from 1860, and to which Bentham's ing the south head of the harbour' when Flora australiensis (1863-78) is the Aus- Harvey is describing his stay in Auckland. tralian contribution. His views on other col- Note 13 reads: 'A curious volcanic island onial botanists and collectors are therefore forming the south head of Auckland based on greater experience than his expert harbour'. There are not very many such knowledge of the seaweeds. We find that he notes, but they are annoying. Similarly, the judged Ferdinand von Mueller, then in his otherwise useful set of biographical notes is second year as Government Botanist of Vic- incomplete. It is, of course, very difficult to toria, 'an excellent fellow, and wonderfully identify every person named in the letters, sound, for a German, in his conception of but what is puzzling is the decision to add, species. He is prepared to knock down many for a small number of people, a footnote say- of Cunningham's, of J.D.H's and even (tell it ing that they have not been identified, and not in Dean Street) of R.B's' (W.H.H. to Sir for others to silently ignore them. Even more William Hooker, 5 September 1854). James irritating is the occasional identification of a Drummond, 'the botanical explorer of the person in footnotes, but no biographical Swan River Colony' is spoken of affection- entry for them. Mr Lowell, for example, is ately as the man to 'whom we owe our know- identified in a footnote (in the second letter ledge of at least % of its vegetation'. William in which he is mentioned) as 'John Lowell, Archer, Ronald Campbell Gunn, Dr George son of John Amory Lowell, the founder of the Bennett and others are visited, described Lowell Institute. He had scientific interests and occasionally judged. and supported collectors'. We glean insights into Harvey's views on In other cases, it may have been impossible the limits of species and on the problem of for the editor to have provided clarification working with difficult groups such as of issues mentioned, where Harvey is reply- Book Review Section

ing to points made in a letter which he is lar biology, the Pasteur Institute's public answering. If such letters survive, it would health work in New Caledonia, and the have been helpful to have had a summary; if controversy surrounding possible occu- they do not, it would have been useful to pational cancers among genetic engineers at have been told this explicitly in the preface the Pasteur Institute. Several authors stress or introduction. the mutual benefits that flowed from French Despite my criticisms of the apparatus, scientific activity in Australia, but in a style the collection is a useful one, and for the gen- reminiscent of international diplomacy eral reader too. It is a fascinating insight into rather than scholarship. (The fallout of the life and times of Australia and the Pacific other French enterprises in the Pacific never just after the gold rushes. The letters reveal seems far from this book.) Harvey's attitudes, abilities and character. The three contributions on Australia cover He was a likeable man, wrote interesting let- different aspects of what proved to be a curi- ters and reported his own and his com- ous exploratory attempt by Pasteur to estab- panions' ideas on class, society and lish a branch of his Institute in Australia. missionary enterprise in a manner to which P.M. Rountree provides an overview of the one cannot take offence. Contemporary episode. In 1887 the New South Wales gov- illustrations of some key locations, photo- ernment announced a reward of £25,000 for graphs of Harvey, the Grays and of Aus- a biological method of exterminating rab- tralians met on his travels, useful maps, and bits, which had overrun the pastoral areas of two reproductions of Harvey's lithographs the colony. Pasteur took up the challenge of Australian algae add to the interest and and sent two scientists, Adrien Loir and usefulness of the volume. Botanists will also Louis Germont, who arrived in Sydney in find useful the listing of plants mentioned in 1888 carrying bacterial cultures of chicken the text, with modern synonymy. cholera, which Pasteur had isolated several Sophie Ducker is to be thanked for turning years previously and which he hoped would her attention more and more to the history of prove fatal to rabbits. The State her scientific field when, as she said to me government's Rabbit Commission cooper- some years ago when we met accidentally in ated by building a laboratory and animal the archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens at enclosure for the scientists on Rodd Island in Kew, she 'had grown too old to dodge the Sydney Harbour. The Pasteur Institute's waves on the rocky platforms and had given scientists successfully demonstrated that up collecting algae'. From that change of the chicken cholera was fatal to the rabbits, intellectual focus a version of Harvey's but they failed to satisfy the Rabbit never published but hoped for Journal has Commission's requirement that the disease finally seen the light. was sufficiently contagious to pass readily through the rabbit population. In the event A.M. Lucas, the Rabbit Commission was dissatisfied with King's College, all submissions, and Australia would wait London. over 60 years for the introduction of myxamatosis as a biological control. The French scientists also explored other potential applications for the Jean Chaussivert and Maurice Blackman biotechnologies that Pasteur had so success- (Eds.), Louis Pasteur and the Pasteur Insti- fully developed and exploited. They estab- tute in Australia. Kensington: French- lished that a local disease of sheep was in Australia Research Centre, University of fact anthrax, and conducted successful New South Wales, 1988. 93pp., illus., $12 trials with anthrax vaccine. When it was clear that the Rabbit Commission was not This small book comprises papers delivered going to give them the prize, Pasteur recalled at a symposium in 1987 to mark the centen- his scientists to Paris. In 1890,however, Loir ary of the Pasteur Institute. The conference, returned to supervise the manufacture and organised by the University of New South distribution of anthrax vaccine and pleuro- Wales' French-Australian Research Centre, pneumonia vaccine for cattle. Loir returned focused particularly on the activities of the to Paris in 1893, but other French scientists Pasteur Institute in Australia in the 1880s maintained the Australian branch of the and 1890s, and readers of this journal will Institute until 1898. primarily be interested in the three papers Pasteur viewed the whole episode with on this subject. Other papers reproduced considerable bitterness and recrimination. here encompass Pasteur's research career, J.S. Chaussivert's paper reports the contents his work on the asymmetry of crystals and of correspondence between Pasteur and his his microbiological studies on wine, the scientific agents. Pasteur blamed the Rabbit Pasteur Institute's contributions to molecu- Commission's rejection of his scheme on the Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Volume 8, Number 1 machinations of a German doctor appointed that could fruitfully be applied to the history to the Rabbit Commission, and to Australian of the Pasteur Institute in Australia. jealousy of the French. Chaussivert suggests that Pasteur ignored the Commission's Richard Gillespie, insistence that the disease be highly con- History and Philosophy of Science tagious because he failed to grasp the Department, immense size of Australian farms. University of Melbourne. Jan Todd shows how the Pasteur Institute only partially adapted to Australian con- ditions, this time in the introduction and marketing of anthrax vaccine. The French Marion Ord (Ed.), Historical Drawings of scientists had identified anthrax and estab- Moths and Butterflies by Harriet and Helena lished the efficacy of the vaccine in New Scott. Sydney: Craftsman House, 1988. South Wales in 1888, but smarting from his 147pp., 56 plates, $85. rejection by the Rabbit Commission, Pasteur waited until 1890 before arranging for local Marion Ord (Ed.), Historical Drawings of production and dissemination of the vaccine. Native Flowers by Harriet and Helena Scott. Spore of the attenuated bacilli were sent Sydney: Craftsman House, 1988. 137pp., 51 from Paris to Sydney, where the Pasteur plates, $85. scientists produced the vaccine. However, the vaccine was never widely used, because These excellently produced publications, it was sensitive to high temperatures and endorsed by the Australian Bicentennial required mustering the animals twice to give Authority in 1988, confer great credit on the them two separate doses. Pastoralists, editor Marion Ord and the publisher Crafts- squeezed by the 1890s depression, saw the man House. Marion Ord wrote the text and vaccine as risky and overpriced. Within a selected the plates, providing an instructive few years a local vaccine was produced by addition to the early history of science in pastoralist John Alexander Gunn and bac- Australia. teriologist John McGarvie Smith, who com- Ever since Captain Cook's arrival, accu- bined Pasteur's techniques with those of his rate graphic records of the flora and fauna of arch-rival, the German Robert Koch; the this continent have become part of our visual single-dose vaccine proved to be cheap, heritage. Owing to the outstanding work of effective and safe and was quickly accepted scholars, foremost among them Bernard by local graziers. Smith, we have remained familiar with the Although the narrative emerges clearly names of early artists such as Sydney enough from these three papers, the analysis Parkinson, Ferdinand Bauer, the Port is rather sketchy. The episode is treated in Jackson painter and others. Botanical art relative isolation from the rest of Pasteur's has to this day remained a live tradition in career, the development of bacteriology and Australia, as can be seen from the work of the application of scientific research to the Margaret Stones and Celia Rosser. Into this problems of Australia's primary industry. distinguished company of names Marion Ord Randall Albury's paper summarising has introduced two new ones: those of Pasteur's career provides insights into Harriet and Helena Scott, whose best work Pasteur's strategy of finding practical appli- had never before been reproduced by mod- cations for his basic research in order to ern methods. The sumptuously presented obtain funding from government and indus- drawings are chosen from the collections of try. Pasteur built his research institute on the Australian Museum and the Mitchell government prizes such as that funded by Library. the New South Wales government; hence his In the Introduction we are told that the sis- annoyance at the drying up of the expected ters were the grand-daughters of Dr Helenus cash flow. The recent work of Bruno Latour Scott, a physician and botanist living for on The Pasteurization of France (Harvard, thirty years on the island of Salsette, near 1988) shows that Pasteur's success can be Bombay, where he worked for the East India seen as a process of extending the certitude Company. Dr Scott had three sons, including and authority of the laboratory over large Alexander Walker Scott, the father of areas of public health and primary industry. Harriet and Helena. Alexander Walker was The strategy of secrecy, competition and educated in England, went to Cambridge, hierarchical organisation, so successful in began life as a lawyer but soon followed his the expansion of markets and empires in the brothers to Australia. It appears that he had 19th century, was applied by Pasteur to bac- been trained in drawing and was brought up teriology with stunning success, even if New with a wide knowledge of natural science. South Wales proved a rather recalcitrant col- While he had a marked predilection for ony. Both these authors adopt approaches entrepreneurial enterprises, he never ceased Book Review Section to specialise in entomological research, and 1890-98 - the plates chosen for the moths trained his daughters in the exact techniques and butterflies volume were taken. The text of the natural science illustrator. Marion Ord accompanying the plates rarely mentions gives a vivid account of the many avenues of the plants on which the caterpillars feed, enterprise open in the middle of last century although they are executed with great atten- to a versatile and inventive man like Alex- tion to botanical accuracy. It would also ander Scott. His most successful venture was have been helpful to have had notes from a the farm on Ash Island, in the mouth of the present-day entomologist telling us how Hunter River, where he grew oranges and many of the butterflies illustrated are still in entertained friends with whom he could existence, and which of them is uniquely share his interests in natural science. Among Australian. his visitors was the explorer Ludwig While the book on butterflies does provide Leichhardt, who went plant collecting with occasional comments on the plates, text only him and 'found their collection of minerals very rarely accompanies the illustrations of and shells instructive in the extreme'. Some native flowers. We find inscriptions showing of the acquaintances the Scotts cultivated in where some of the flowers were found, but Sydney were medical men such as Dr David the drawings in this volume are not often Ramsay, one of whose sons became a child- signed and give the impression of not having hood friend of Harriet and Helena, and Dr been planned for publication. James Mitchell, father of David Scott Sometimes information is rather Mitchell, founder of the Mitchell Library. confusingly distributed: plate 37 of volume When Alexander Scott prepared the work I1 carries a note 'the first of a series of Aus- which brought recognition to the family, tralian Christmas cards 1879'. An expla- namely Australian Lepidoptera and their nation is found on p.29 of the Introduction: Transformations, the plates were 'drawn 'The artist also designed the first Australian from life by Harriet and Helena Scott, with Christmas cards printed by Turner & descriptions, general and systematic, by Henderson in Sydney in 1879'. No comment A.W. Scott M.A.' He tried to publish this book is made on the process employed by this in Sydney in 1851, but did not succeed until firm, and no reference appears to plates 1864 in England with the publisher van 27-51, where these cards are illustrated. Voort. Botanist William Swainson praised Both books would have benefited from lists the exact naturalism and the three- of plates and indices. dimensional effects obtained in the draw- ings. The insects were depicted life size, Ursula Hoff, mostly together with the caterpillar, the Department of Fine Arts, chrysalis and the plant the caterpillar feeds University of Melbourne. on. Antennae, legs and other details are delineated in the lower margin. The sisters became famous and were made honorary members of the Entomological Society of J.H. Pearn, In the Capacity of a Surgeon: a Sydney. biography of Walter Scott, surgeon and Aus- In some plates distant landscapes are tralian colonist, andfirst civilian of Queens- sketched in - of scenery around Sydney - land. Brisbane: University of Queensland, which suggest in a general way the habitat of 1988. vi + 226pp., illus. $28. the insects which occupy the foreground. Both volumes of the 'Ash Island Series' (Vol. Professor John Pearn has rendered a service I moths and butterflies, Vol. I1 native to Australian medical history in publishing; flowers) reproduce the original illustrations this very readable biography of Walter Scott; in three-quarter reduction. Some of them are (1787-1854). Scott is the only person known accompanied by contemporary comments, to have had any medical training among the either taken from Alexander Walker's seventy men, women and children that descriptions or, more often, from William founded the first settlement in Queensland Swainson's review, which was published in at Moreton Bay in 1824. Little original the Sydney Morning Herald in August material has been found concerning the 1851. detailed nature of the medical problems In view of the fine production of these encountered during its first eleven months, books and the introductions so full of new when Scott, the commissariat storekeeper, facts and events, it is regrettable that we acted also in the capacity of a surgeon. 111- have not been given more precise details: one ness was a major concern. The commandant, would have liked to have been told, for Lieutenant Miller, subsequently complained example, from which of the two volumes of that 'sickness attacked the Prisoners' - the Lepidoptera - one published in London in twenty-nine convicts, mainly volunteers. 1864, the other in five parts in Sydney in Frequently Miller had only 'nine, ten, eleven Historical Records ofAustralianScience, Volume 8, Number 1 or twelve men, per day, to carry into effect the Aborigines seen near the site of the first plans that would have required at least one settlement, Cunningham wrote: 'the full- hundred'. The little that is known about grown men were exceedingly robust of ath- Scott's work at the settlements concerns his letic form and muscular limb, were in good commissariat activities, not his role as sur- condition . . . their stature averaging 6 feet'. geon. Such was the obscurity surrounding Yet within weeks of their arrival the settlers that role that Dr E.S. Jackson, Queensland's would have presented a sad contrast. On top first medical historian, speculated in 1929 of his storekeeper duties, Scott undoubtedly that the expedition must have had someone was trying to cope with dysentery, fevers responsible for the care of the sick, but 'who and viral diseases, as well as convicts that person was, I have found it impossible 'speared by the blacks' or flogged by the to determine'. The clue is in thejournal of His soldiers. Children were born. Here again Majesty's Botanist, Allan Cunningham, Scott's role, if any, is unknown. Scott's own where among those listed aboard the brig, health declined, his eyesight suffered per- the Amity, that took the settlers to Moreton manent damage, and he is the first European Bay was 'a commissariat store-keeper (act- in Queensland known to have had symptoms ing also in the capacity of a surgeon)'. indicating trachoma. Pearn took up the challenge to find out The settlement at Redcliffe was aban- more about this unsung pioneer. In the best doned after seven months and transferred to biographical traditions, he traversed the Brisbane. This would have been very ardu- scenes of Scott's life, from his birthplace in ous for the commissariat storekeeper, the Scottish borders to Edinburgh, where responsible for ensuring that no supplies Scott, although he had already practised as were lost. The stock of medicines was almost a surgeon, studied at the medical school for exhausted. Soon the food supply, the issuing two years; thence to Sydney, Moreton Bay, of which was Scott's duty, became seriously the Hunter River area, where Scott acquired depleted. Crops were either not ready for two grants of land, and finally to London harvest or had failed. It was probably due where Scott died. Pearn took his camera, and largely to Scott's abilities that no death the biography is well illustrated with photo- occurred during the eleven months that he graphs of the places important in Scott's life. acted in the capacity of a surgeon. However, In addition, there are many photocopies of it must have been a considerable relief when documents, maps, newspaper articles, Dr Henry Cowper, the settlement's first sketches and the like. These all serve to flesh official medical attendant, arrived. out the rather meagre factual records, and The expedition seems to have been the result is an informative, thought- unrealistically equipped medically. Within a provoking, fully referenced and absorbing few days of landing, the first urgent requests account of Scott's life and times. for more medical supplies were sent to Syd- Scott was born in a hamlet in Westerkirk ney, but no real improvement occurred dur- parish, Dumfriesshire. His father, an anti- ing Scott's period of responsibility for the mony miner, died when Walter was three. sick. Pearn provides an interesting account How could the widow's son become a sur- of the materials held in medical stores in geon? The answer has implications for New South Wales, and of the basic pharma- today's Australian politicians and edu- copoeia that accompanied Scott to Moreton cationalists. The attitudes of the border Bay. Scots were anything but anti-educational. Scott returned to Sydney after two years The community was socially advanced and in Queensland and continued working with succoured those in need. The mining com- the commissariat until his resignation in pany built a school and the miners set up a 1830. With his land grants in the lower library. Pearn provides evidence of the ben- Hunter Valley he became prosperous and eficial results of this valuing of education in served the district in many ways. In 1854 he the small community of fewer than seven travelled to London, possibly to seek help for hundred. He lists an almost incredible num- his failing health. Soon after, an epidemic of ber of Westerkirk children who became emi- cholera broke out and at its height Scott died, nent in engineering, medicine, the armed probably from the disease. services and so on. How did Scott, a kindly man known for The reasons why Scott migrated and 'private acts of kindness liberally bestowed', joined the commissariat are unknown. It is view the convict system? In 1846 he was almost certain that he did not practise full- reported as saying of convicts: 'he had time as a surgeon in Australia, nor have always found them acting honourably', and detailed records been found of his medical of the transportation system: 'he detested work in the Moreton Bay settlements. We are and abominated the very thought'. It is com- left to ponder about the disharmony between forting to think that in the early days of the settlers and their new environment. Of settlement in Queensland, Scott, one of its 46 Book Review Section few civilians, may have eased the plight of the sciences, for example, since the overall the sick and shown them some of his 'unos- levels in Australia of graduates, practising tentatious benevolence'. scientists and scientific effort rose greatly Readers will feel indebted to Professor after 1945, while our attachment to the U.K. Pearn for his enthusiasm and commitment in declined much more slowly. researching Scott's life, and for this addition Honeycombe suggests that Australia has to Australian medical history. contributed most to British science in astron- omy, physics and chemistry. In astronomy W.A. McDougall, this has occurred through the use by U.K. School of Dental Science, astronomers of facilities in Australia, and in University of Melbourne. all three fields by the journeys to the U.K. of Australian scientists - in physics by Lawrence Bragg and a number of Laby's M'el- bourne students (e.g. Massey and Burhop), T.B. Millar (Ed.), The Australian Contri- and in chemistry by James Mason and a bution to Britain: Papers of a Conference at group of Sydney graduates (e.g. Nyholm, Sir the Royal Society, 7-8 June, 1988. London: John and Lady Cornforth, Birch and Buck- Australian Studies Centre, University of ingham). Many such travellers stayed on, to London, 1988. 141pp., £6.00. contribute directly and significantly to Brit- ish scientific activities. Honeycombe's list of I was sceptical. A small collection of papers, Australian technology advances - including particularly from another little-known the Ford utility truck or 'Ute' - also reminds bicentennial conference, seemed unlikely to us that Australians can be industrial demand attention. And yet the title was innovators. intriguing and provocative; Britain's contri- Fenner points out, correctly, that science bution to Australia is unquestionably exten- is an international activity and that dis- sive, but Australia's contribution to Britain? coveries in science are not generally In addition, the conference was convened by location-specific. His paper is therefore con- the Australian Studies Centre of the Univer- cerned 'with Australian medical scientists, sity of London, the Royal Society, and the practitioners and administrators and the Britain-Australia Bicentennial Committee in contributions they have made to Britain'. the U.K., and was held at the Royal Society; He gives a useful if subjective table of 23 it must surely be worth reviewing (cultural 'Australian graduates (mostly MB BS) who cringe?) went to Britain and rose to eminence there'; My initial reaction turned out to be the cor- and he highlights several, including Grafton rect one; this is a disappointing collection of Elliot Smith, who 'made an indelible papers which, for the most part, fails to come impression on British anthropology and to grips with the apparently promising sub- neurology', and Howard Florey, who ject of the conference. The head of the Aus- 'exemplifies best the two-way contributions tralian Studies Centre, Professor Millar, between Australia and Britain'. Florey's hoped to focus upon 'those who made the school of pathology at Oxford, Fenner points journey from the Antipodes back to Britain' out, 'was a Mecca for young Australian - those migrants who returned - and upon scientists seeking overseas experience . . . ' those Australians who significantly influ- Florey's chair was later filled by another enced British life. In the end, the papers in Australian, Henry Harris (a 1950 Sydney this volume are about the latter, the 'lumi- medical graduate), who has helped 'to naries', and not the former, the 'workers'. realize the dream of Sir Hugh Cairns that the The two papers of most interest to readers Oxford clinical school should be an outstand- of this journal are Robert Honeycombe ing centre of good professional science as (Emeritus Professor of Metallurgy of the well as good professional medicine'. University of Cambridge and an expatriate It is left to authors in other fields, how- Australian) on 'Physical Science and Tech- ever, to ask the searching questions and to nology', and Frank Fenner (Emeritus Pro- provide a deeper analysis. Anthony fessor of Microbiology of the A.N.U.) on Delamothe, deputy editor of the British 'Medicine and Medical Science'. Like most of Medical Journal and a London theatre critic, the other papers, these authors found them- in a survey of the Australian contribution to selves discussing the British contribution to British theatre, film and ballet, asks: 'what Australia, and then corrected this tendency counts as Australian, exactly, and what by listing Australians who had achieved pos- counts as a contribution?' To count as a con- ition and fame in the U.K. The paucity of tribution, Delamothe suggests, it is not suf- Australian influence before World War I1 ficient for even an outstanding act or piece of and its greater importance after 1945 is a theatre to play in London and then move on. recurring theme; perhaps not surprising in To qualify for that description something Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Volume 8, Number 1 significant and more permanent has to pass Murdoch. Davie concedes that Murdoch's between the Australian performer and the defeat of the print unions at Wapping and his British theatre, and as examples he gives saving of several newspapers from extinc- Michael Blakemore's direction and John tion are pluses. He also suggests, however, Bluthall's acting. Like others, he does not that 'when Mr. Murdoch bought thesun, the satisfactorily define 'Australian'. standards of the Fleet Street dailies were on In place of a list of names, Delamothe gives the improve, . . . they treated their readers as us 'history'. He notes the frequent British intelligent beings'; but that 'nowadays, the put down of Australian theatre (as does mass circulation of tabloids print more tripe Smith of Australian art), and lists than any newspapers in the world known to Australia's major contributions to British me'. Similarly, after the Times and Sunday theatre as: Australia as a place for British Times bought and published the Hitler Diar- productions to tour profitably and where ies, 'an unrepentent Mr. Murdoch was after- British actors could get work, and, in the wards quoted as saying, "After all, we are in other direction, the importance of Aus- the entertainment business". . . This was not tralian performers to British vaudeville, to a statement that any previous Times pro- British theatre after the Second World War prietor could have made. It is surprising how -when a whole generation of Australian tal- quickly a famous newspaper's authority can ent decamped there - and to the 'physicality' crumble.' of the British stage. The contribution of Australian science and Delamothe concludes that 'Australians scientists seems rather insignificant when have made contributions here but have not viewed from this sad perspective. changed things remarkably; it is important to recognise, however, that whatever contri- John Jenkin, butions have been made, they have beenpur- Physics Department, chased at a price for Australia'. Perhaps the La Trobe University. same could be said in relation to Australian science. John Pearn (Ed.), Pioneer Medicine indus- Professor Bernard Smith's paper on 'An tralia. Brisbane: Amphion Press, 1988. xiv Australian contribution to British art? is the + 325pp., illus.; $24.95 (cloth), $19.95 best in the collection - witty, pungent, pen- (paper). etrating, and doubtful about the wisdom of the conference topic. A few quotations may This book consists of papers given at the suffice: Australian Bicentennial Medical Congress, held at Cairns in 1988. More than half the In my experience, artists are deeply suspicious authors are medical graduates and two- of their work being evaluated in national thirds are Queenslanders. Three-fifths of the terms. So I fear that the question 'what has been papers are about Queensland topics, suggest- Australia's contribution to British art?' is one ing that a narrower title might have been a of those trick questions like whether one has better guide to wotential readers. Some of stopped beating one's wife. these ~Garacteristics,unfortunately, reflect The question of the 'exotic' probably lies at prevailing difficulties in the historiography the heart of understanding --and misunder- of medicine in Australia. There is still-too standing - the relationship that Australian art much parochialism and too little recognition bears to~ritishart. that the view from outside is as significant Smith includes a devastating analysis of for understanding the institution of medi- British reaction to post-WWII Australian cine as the view from within. art, and finally concludes: The opening essay on 'The Land They Left Behind: England in 1787' does not prepare A small group of Australian artists has broken through the massive prejudices of the past, but the reader to take a benign view of what will it still suffers from being treated as exotica. follow. It is ill-ordered and inaccurate. The Has Australian art made a contribution to proposal to look at Portsmouth and British art? Frankly, I do not know. Plymouth in 1787 through the eyes of a Portsmouth doctor and the Tolpuddle mar- Such a conclusion is sad enough for a confer- tyrs is imaginative, but it is not carried ence that started in hope but concluded, in its through. In 2500 words we leap from printed form, disappointingly. There is, William Dampier, 100 years before the First however, worse to follow. In a review of Fleet, to Henry Ayers, who left Portsmouth 'Media and Publishing', Michael Davie, for a two generations after the Fleet and can time the editor of the Melbourne Age news- hardly have been a 'prominent Portsmouth paper, makes a plausible case that the Aus- citizen', whatever he became in South Aus- tralian who has made the greatest impact on tralia after arriving there at the age of Britain in the last 200 years is Rupert twenty. In between we are told, Book Review Section inaccurately, that Mozart's music was heard lection called 'Pioneers and Pioneering for the first time in 1787 and, accurately but Medicine'. It begins with a chapter which, irrelevantly, that Beethoven was insouciantly, claims to be about early Aus- seventeen. tralian obstetrics but is mostly about mid- Pearn's account of the First Fleet surgeons wifery and is whiggish and un-original. is organized around an important question, Worse, it appears uninformed by the body of whether diversity in medical education - scholarly knowledge about the topic which which he finds lacking now but believes was has been published previously. It is followed evident in his subjects then - is good for the by a piece on 'Australian Medical discipline and its patients. The other contri- Governors', which pursues no theme in medi- butions, in a section called 'First Doctors', cal, political or constitutional history. A also have an organizing principle for the chapter on the origins of the Royal Flying presentation of interesting though not Doctor Service is straight, progressive nar- always original material. Helen Woolcock's rative, which alludes to some of the technical account of medical supervision on an emi- problems of developing the service but gives grant ship to Moreton Bay in 1861-62 is the no hint of the strength, and little of the best of the five essays in the section - though nature, of the interests and forces with the date hardly suggests her characters were which founders had to contend. among the first doctors. Three of the chapters in Part IV are more Part I1 of this volume, called 'The Hostile competent. Pearn himself, with John Wilson, Land', has two accounts of pioneering work gives a fair account of the contention which - on hookworm and trachoma - which are surrounded Sister Elizabeth Kenny's inno- competent pieces of medical history. There is vations in rehabilitative nursing, especially also an interesting account from a medical for polio victims. In addition, Wilson and perspective of working conditions and occu- Pearn establish valid grounds for consider- pational health problems in the pearling ing a link between her unorthodox training industry, which adds yet another chapter to and her willingness to depart from orthodox the sorry account of exploitation of workers methods. The paper on Jack Barnes, who did by primary industries in Australia. A fourth the detective work on the box jellyfish, is a paper, on 'Murderers' Skulls', is neither useful contribution to knowledge, and the about pioneering nor about a hostile land: it account by Geoffrey ~ennyof H. J. is useful chiefly for its warning against the Wilkinson's innovative work on the way that manipulation of statistical techniques by skeletal muscles operate is another reason- biological determinists. able account of science from within. 'Public Health and Tropical Medicine' has Medical history in Australia has gone long been a topic of some recent significance in enough down the track of publishing Australia. The section of Pioneer Medicine unrevised conference papers and memor- bearing this title might have illuminated the abilia. Some of the papers in this collection dynamics of the recent interest, but it does (for examde. one on the introduction of not do so. There is a commentary on some of trout and salmon eggs to Australia) would the characters in aphotograph of the official probably not have achieved publication any- party at the opening of the Australian Insti- where but in this volume. These proceedings tute of Tropical Medicine at Townsville in should have had a much firmer editorial 1913, and an account of the later translo- hand, which Pearn's writing suggests he cation of the Institute to Sydney. The second would be capable of providing. of those items does not have a clear narrative A foreword to Pioneer Medicine in Aus- line and is not convincing in its effort to tralia by Dalton, the professor of history at apply Roe's style of cultural history to the James Cook University, suggests that explanation of the retreat from Townsville. the tendency has been for the medical doctor A chapter on 'A Rainforest Pharmacopeia' and the historian, having come into medical does not live up to its subtitle - 'Five thou- history from different directions, to return sand years of effective medicine' - although each of them whence he came, to address his it does demonstrate the arrogant ignorance findings to his peers, but to interact further of the European response to Aboriginal scarcely at all. knowledge and does provide lists of pharma- cological substances and practices. In the A little of the good medical history written in fourth paper in Part 111, May also demon- Australia appears in the Medical Journd of strates that 'early health problems in abor- Australia, although most appears in other igines' owed as much as modern 'health' settings and, regrettably, overseas. problems in Aborigines do to the imposition Virtually none of the good history of medi- of a white system which is insensitive to the cine or sociology of medicine that is done in black culture it displaces. Australia is offered to the,M.J.A.,and most of Part IV of the book is a bits-and-pieces col- the historians and sociologists would have 49 Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Volume 8, Number 1 no expectation that it would appear there. It activities. Although, in post-goldrush Vic- would do no harm to the scholars in history toria, the acclimatisation of exotic plants and sociology to have to imagine a medical and animals was officially encouraged in the audience for their critical work on medicine, hope of enhancing agricultural diversity and and it would benefit the medical profession prosperity, and although such activities considerably to read some of that critical have greatly influenced the shape of the study. The M.J.A. might do the profession, twentieth century Australian environment, the country and the critical scholars a con- little serious study has been made of this siderable service by finding an editor of popular and respected mid-nineteenth cen- authority and setting aside a few pages each tury activity. By focusing on the environ- month for the best Australian writing in mental havoc caused by the rabbit and using medical history and the history and soci- the wisdom of hindsight, authors such as ology of medicine. A year or two of that Eric Rolls (in They All Ran Wild) have deni- would see the quality of the offerings grated nineteenth century acclimatisation advance some distance beyond what is gath- activities and have failed to consider them in ered in Pioneer Medicine in Australia. their proper economic, social and scientific context. Neville Hicks, I had hoped that these two recently pub- Department of Community Medicine, lished books covering the trout's Australian University of Adelaide. debut would set the record straight. Both books are descriptive rather than analytical and of popular rather than academic appeal. Both reveal nineteenth century pictures of Jack Ritchie, The Australian Trout: its acclimatisation untinted by twentieth cen- introduction and acclimatisation in Vic- tury concepts. However, only Ritchie's The torian waters. Melbourne: Victorian Australian Trout includes any contextual Fly-Fishers' Association, 1988. 104pp., background. O'Brien's picture of the illus., $27.50. Ballarat Fish Acclimatisation Society in his Ballarat Fish Hatchery, only a small portion Robert O'Brien, Ballarat Fish Hatchery: A of which deals with nineteenth century History, 1870-1 987. Ballarat: Ballarat Fish activities, is both fragmentary and Acclimatisation Society Inc., 1988. 201pp., backgroundless. illus.; $30 (cloth), $19 (paper). Jack Ritchie, a metallurgical engineer by profession and an experienced fisherman by How many trout-fishing readers of this inclination, describes the protracted journal thought that they were angling for attempts to establish in Australian waters an indigenous fish? - a belief confirmed by the economically important salmon, Salmo the title of a recent book, The Australian salar, and, as an after-thought, its less econ- Trout. The much smaller print of the subtitle omically attractive relative, the brown - its introduction and acclimatisation in trout, Salmo trutta. Since the 12,000-mile Victorian waters - reveals the trout's true sea trip from London to Melbourne took alien origins. Because it reached Australian about three months, this was not an easy waters in the middle of last century, the task, and the lengths to which dedicated trout is about as Australian as the rabbit! individuals, aided by institutions and gov- Fortunately, there are genetic as well as geo- ernments, went are remarkable. It is a fasci- graphic justifications for calling the brown nating saga involving significant but, by trout, now happily acclimatised in Aus- today's standards, very rudimentary tralian waters, the 'Australian trout'. advances in the science of fish culture. Because its ancestors came so long ago from Because salmon and brown trout are cold such a small sample of the English brown water fish, temperatures over about 24°C are trout population, the Australian trout is now lethal to them. Consequently, they cannot genetically distinct from its British cousins. survive a prolonged sea voyage through the I'm not sure whether a similar claim can be tropics. But could their ova? The artificial made for the development of an Australian hatching and rearing of these two fish had strain of the rabbit. However, unlike the rab- been practised in Europe for barely a decade bit, the trout is generally well regarded and when the first unsuccessful attempt was now constitutes Victoria's and Tasmania's made -in 1852, without ice - to transport the most important freshwater recreational commercially desirable salmon, as fertilized fishing resource. ova, across the equator to Tasmania. Despite The rabbit, which was introduced by eager concerted efforts in Tasmania and England, allies of the Acclimatisation Society of Vic- and the use of tons of ice to cool the gravel- toria, is partly to blame for the bad press beds of ova, two subsequent attempts nearly given to nineteenth century acclimatisation a decade later were also unsuccessful. In Book Review Section

London, a group of Australian colonists had the acclimatisation of fish. Remarkably, the even formed the 'Australian Association', fish hatchery of one such society, the with the specific aim of effecting the antip- Ballarat Fish Acclimatisation Society, still odean transfer of salmon ova. It included functions at the southern end of Ballarat's James Youl from Tasmania and Edward Botanical Gardens. Unfortunately, O'Brien's Wilson of the Melbourne Argus, a founder of Ballarat Fish Hatcherg does not explore the both the British and Victorian acclimatis- important role of the society within the ation societies. active fish acclirnatisation network in late Ritchie describes the complexity of inter- nineteenth century Victoria. From the actions that resulted in the first successful society's minutes O'Brien has extracted a antipodean transportation of salmon and multitude of items to form a temporal collage trout ova in 1864. Experiments at the of the society's activities, including the sev- Wenham Lake Ice Company in London had eral introductions of trout ova from Tas- demonstrated that fertilized salmon ova mania and the hatching and distribution of could survive for almost four months if the young trout. Unfortunately, these activi- packed in living moss, charcoal and sur- ties are not set in the context of their times, rounded by ice. Youl's appeals for salmon and are evaluatedno further. No sense of the ova in the London Times yielded both difficulty or enthusiasm emerges. Instead, salmon and brown trout ova. Also donated an extensive, albeit somewhat disjointed pic- were dock and ship space, including a sub- ture of the society's personnel and activities stantial 'ice house', on a speedy clipper ship. during its long lifetime is revealed. Of the the Norfolk, on her trip to Melbourne. In numerous interesting early photos, most are special boxes in the 'ice house' Youl carefully undated; and frustratingly, there is no packed the thousands of fertilized ova. A index. sailing rather than a steamship was chosen In The Australian Trout, the details of the because of its less damaging vibrations on elaborate and ambitious piscicultural activi- the delicate ova. On the other side of the ties involved in the attempts to introduce world Edward Wilson arranged for the salmon and trout into antipodean waters are trans-shipment of most of the ova from Mel- set against the mid-nineteenth century glo- bourne to Hobart. These ova were carefully bal popularity of acclimatisation. However, delivered to gravel hatching beds on the there is no attempt to explain these activities Plenty River (a tributary of the Derwent) in terms of contemporary biological ideas. which had been prepared several years The lack of both evolutionary and ecological earlier in eager anticipation by the honorary concepts that must underpin a simplistic Tasmanian Salmon Commissioners. Within faith in acclimatisation is not considered. months of their first release in Tasmania, Furthermore, while the distribution of trout young salmon were also released into Badger is clearly described, the biological reper- Creek near Healesville, Victoria. cussions of these introductions remain Success was illusory. Despite three unmentioned. Although that story is not as further successful shipments of salmon ova dramatic as the cautionary tale of the rabbit, across the equator, and reported sightings of the ecological effects of trout on indigenous salmon in the Derwent and the Yarra, salmon fish and other organisms is worthy of have never become acclimatised in Victorian comment. or Tasmanian waters. On the other hand, by Despite these annoying inadequacies, the the 1870s brown trout from ova spawned in saga described in this small and attractively Tasmania had been successfully introduced produced book, The Australian Trout, is well and distributed by the Acclimatisation worth the attention of anyone who, like Society of Victoria to rivers throughout Vic- myself, is interested in the history of animal toria. Thus, the successful outcome of the introduction and acclimatisation in protracted voluntary labour of such men as Australia. James Youl and Edward Wilson, and the hun- dreds (possibly thousands) of pounds spent Linden Gillbank, by the Tasmanian Salmon Commissioners, History & Philosophy of Science the Victorian Government and the Acclimat- Department, isation Society of Victoria, was the introduc- University of Melbourne. tion into Australian rivers, not of salmon but of the brown trout. These were the ancestors of today's Australian trout. In the final quarter of the nineteenth cen- Timothy O'Leary, North and Aloft. Bris- tury, after Victoria's acclimatisation society bane: Amphion Press, 1988. x + 180pp., had recognized its zoo-keeping role, an illus., $25. enthusiasm for fish acclimatisation per- sisted. Societies were formed specifically for Timothy O'Leary, Western Wings of Care. Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Voluw8, Number 1

Brisbane: Amphion Press, 1988. viii + tragedy sustained by the Flying Doctor Ser- lOOpp., illus., $26. vice, O'Leary has been able to fit together the disparate elements which made up this Timothy O'Leary was a flying doctor, one of unique, world-renowned, flying medical ser- the few to record his experiences. Sixty-two vice. The vision of the founder, Reverend years old when he died in 1987, he was John Flynn, and the use of pedal-operated unable to complete his personal memoir. wireless sets invented by the brilliant radio This was undertaken by John Pearn and engineer Alf Traeger, gave continuity to the Graham Anderson, and to their credit, contemporary scene. O'Leary pays tribute to O'Leary's personal touch remains in the his fellow workers, none more poignantly printed volumes. And what a saga it is! than the radiomen, whom he describes as North and Aloft and its companion volume 'unsung heroes' and as 'essential a Western Wings of Care provide a vivid component of the operating team as the doc- account of medicine in the outback. Broadly, tor, the pilot and the maintenance crew'. As the theme is a celebration of life in one of the anchorman at the nerve centre of the base, most difficult areas of Australia - isolated the radio operator was vital for efficient western Queensland and the Gulf country. It running of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. is the story of a life of service. It concerns the Romantic perceptions of the work of the ordinary, everyday problems and joys of flying doctor attracted the more adventur- doctoring in that region, where life itself is ous members of the medical profession. This an extraordinary battle of survival over dis- resulted in a high turn over of staff; for, in tance, nature, ignorance and hardship. Sig- addition to the bleakness associated with nificantly, the whole of O'Leary's outback living and contrary seasonal con- professional life was devoted to the people ditions, the absence of a medical fraternity of inland Queensland; he brought modern and the prohibition of night flying created medicine to the outback. disaffection. In the post-war period, Perhaps O'Leary's major contribution is between 1947 and 1961,Cloncurry saw nine- his articulation of the two main problems teen flying doctors; it was difficult to retain that confronted the practical delivery of one for even twelve months. O'Leary stayed medical care in outback Queensland. Lack of twenty-seven years. resources prevented the establishment of His first posting was to the new base at adequte health services in that inhospitable Charters Towers, where he remained for five terrain; more doctors and nurses were years. North and Aloft is about this early needed. The other serious difficulty was a period, when the young Irish immigrant was fundamental problem of the time: the time able to develop, despite his deep personal when Aborigines had very few legal rights, grief, a strong bond with that harsh environ- were not classified as citizens of their own ment and the people he served. During his land, and were generally subjected to a stan- tenure, O'Leary was responsible for the dard of medical care substantially inferior to extension of medical clinics into the Gulf of that delivered to the sophisticated European Carpentaria, where most of his patients city folk. O'Leary recognised the evils of were Aboriginal people. During the early paternalism, and with a blend of idealism 1960s, when flying was hazardous and and pragmatism endeavoured to be the per- radios and instruments were inadequate, he sonal physician of thousands of black and conducted monthly medical clinics at the white Australians. numerous Aboriginal mission stations. He What O'Leary has chosen to record notes that some tribal customs, mostly to do reflects a good deal of the man himself. His with marriage, were still prevalent. Only chronicle is never depressing, although rarely was contact made with Aborigines liv- sometimes sad. All three periods in which he ing under the 'protection' of the missions. wrote - 1954-55 as a young doctor at Char- For seven years O'Leary then worked in ters Towers, the 1980s immediately prior to Brisbane as the Medical Superintendent of his retirement due to ill health, and the last the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Qld). Of this year of his life, 1987 - were momentous period he has recorded nothing. Similarly, times. This testimony reflects not only his there are no clinical writings from Cairns or sensitivity and intellect, but also his Mount Isa. From his tenure at Charleville we wholeness. have some interesting clinical and aviation A close brush with death on 22 October stories as well as a good photograph of 1953, in a plane crash which claimed the O'Leary conducting a daily 'radio medical'. lives of Renee Burke, O'Leary's wife of six Especially useful in each volume is the weeks, and the pilot, Martin Garrett, stimu- comprehensive index, which, beside men- lated O'Leary to commence writing these tioning place names, deals with subjects memoirs. From a personal examination of such as crocodiles, mercy flights, snake bite, the circumstances of the first major air survival rations and infant mortality. A 52 Historical Records ofAustralian Science, Volume 8, Number 1 valuable appendix, repeated in both vol- umes, is a chronology of Timothy Joseph O'Leary; Western Wings of Care has an additional chronological list of the aircraft used in Queensland by the Royal Flying Doc- tor Service. A liberal use of photographs, many taken by the author, gives an immedi- acy to the text, thus creating amore personal record of the patients and friends of the com- passionate physician. These handsomely hardbound books are decorated with paint- ings by Paul Ramsden and Robert Allen, depicting the Royal Flying Doctor Service team - doctor, nurse, pilot and radio oper- ator - against the harsh red earth of inland Australia. Lori Harloe, Department of History & Politics, James Cook University of Nth. Qld.

Erratum

Volume 7, number 4 - in the book review of Mawson's Antarctic Diaries, the last four lines on p.427 should be transposed to four lines up from the bottom of p.428. Historical Records of Australian Science is indexed in APAIS: Australian Public Affairs Information Service produced by the National Library of Australia in both online and printed form. Write to: National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Canberra ACT 2600, addressing requests for APAIS online access to, Ozline: Australian Information Network, and for printed APAIS to, Sales & Subscriptions Section. Or ring (062) 62 1636 for information on APAIS online, or (062) 62 1664 for printed APAIS.