Governing the health care state: a comparative study of the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany

approach of the French Enlightenment which included the central government's goal of uniformity of procedures and government training in the name of science, technology, progress, and national security. Midwifery was for her a state affair. In her teaching she privileged the technical, referring to her mannequin as the "machine". An entrepreneur, she emphasized the baby as the "product", a departure from typical early modern French childbirthing practices which stressed the welfare of the mother over the baby. Her aim was to produce babies for France "like a cobbler makes shoes" (p. 113). In addition to du Coudray's story, this book is also a meditation on the historian's craft. Du Coudray provides an opportunity for Gelbart to present her historiographic agenda: that history is above all a good story. Her method is: "getting things basically straight, of course, but taking some gambles too" (p. 283). As such, this account is as much about how we should write history as it is about Madame du Coudray. The story of Madame du Coudray is also a moral tale. Du Coudray through Gelbart speaks to academic women. In the end, du Coudray is a woman enriched by her work. As Gelbart puts it, in du Coudray "self and profession have flourished together" (p. 246). I read this as Gelbart speaking about herself and other female academics for whom du Coudray provides an opportunity to contemplate themselves and their professional identities. In sum, this book is irresistible. It is the second account in the history of medicine that I read right through, that I simply could not put down. The other, curiously, was also about midwifery, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's A midwife's tale (1991). Gelbart is to be congratulated on producing a compelling and beautifully written story. This book also provides the best account of early modern pregnancy and childbirth practices that I have read anywhere. As an added bonus, there is a full bibliography and an excellent index, both of which are all too rare these days. I urge all historians of medicine, women, and France to read about Madame du Coudray. I hope and expect that this book will win a major prize. It is outstanding. This stimulating, if rather repetitive, comparative essay starts with a familiar conundrum. Health systems around the world are in crisis because of the need to contain costs. Solutions, as in Britain with the development of internal markets, are …