Le milieu médical en France du XIIe au XVe siècle

'Scientists and Charlatans' (pp. 257-331), Gillispie goes on to show doctors endeavouring to define more clearly the contours of their profession by attacking what they saw as medical quacks. Entertaining full-dress treatments of the medical careers of Mesmer and Marat illuminate the general theme. Gillispie's general thesis is not, it is true, novel in regard to medical science. However, the book's breadth of scope allows medical developments to be placed against the wider panorama of Enlightenment science. The biographical and institutional approach may at times lack theoretical edge; but it makes for diverting as well as instructive reading. At the end, one emerges with a clearer sense of the world of emulation and research, government sponsorship and private patronage, professional overlaps and personal quirks and eccentricities which Enlightenment scientists inhabited. Colin Jones Department of History, University of Exeter