Essays on the history of the microscope

phical thought begins in Chapter IV and culminates in Chapters VII and VIII, where Staum is at his best with an analysis of Cabanis's Rapports du physique et du moral de l'homme. Two later chapters (IX and XI) complete the argument for Staum's first thesis with comments on the works of some of Cabanis' § contemporaries who pursued themes similar to those treated in the Rapports, and finally with a discussion of Cabanis's posthumously-published letter on "first causes". Staum's second thesis (developed especially in Chapters IV-VI and X) is less easily characterized than the first one, and less successfully argued. Negatively, Staum holds that Cabanis's socio-political position was not derived from his philosophical doctrines, but neither were his doctrines derived from his socio-political position. Positively, however, Staum shows that a similar tension animates both the philosophical and the political thought of Cabanis-a tension arising from the valorization of the "natural" and the "free" on the one hand, and a justification of "rational" intervention and "regulation" on the other hand. How these contradictory elements could come to coexist in both these spheres of Cabanis's thought, and to what extent they generally characterized the political and philosophical doctrines of this period, are questions not thoroughly explored by Staum. The issue is treated purely as a biographical problem concerning the individual, Cabanis; and there the matter rests. Staum has no conceptual tools to take him beyond this limited framework, and he is dismissive of two alternative methodologies that might offer such tools: marxist historiography (of which only the most rigid stereotype is presented without any exemplars of this position being instanced), and Michel Foucault's analysis of the relations between power and discourse (which is travestied as a conspiracy theory). So, on balance, a great opportunity is lost and the matter is left unclear. This limitation aside, however, historians of medicine who are interested in the revolutionary period in France should find a considerable amount of useful material in Staum's book. The analysis of Cabanis's medical writings and of his involvement in the reform of medical education and the hospital system is lucid and informative. Staum explicitly notes his points of agreement and disagreement with other recent studies in the area (particularly those of Sergio Moravia), and the scholarly apparatus of his book is competently elaborated. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the volume in its physical aspect is well-bound, pleasantly-designed, and free of …