Life, marriage and death in a medieval parish. Economy, society and demography in Halesowen 1270–1400

for discussion. This was clearly part of a more widespread reaction against these unorthodox practitioners who, as trained doctors, could not be dismissed easily as quacks. Homoeopathy was outlawed by the Liverpool profession in the face of considerable lay support manifest through the homoeopathic dispensaries and hospital. In the account of the Institution in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries Mr. Shepherd emphasizes the development of specialisms within hospital medicine. The establishment of Liverpool as an international centre for orthopaedics is traced from the 1850s, when the bone-setter Evan Thomas was shunned as a quack, to the 1930s when Thomas's son, Hugh Owen (1834-1891), M.R.C.S., was remembered with respect, and his grandson, Sir Robert Jones, had become a world-famous specialist. Jones's work during the 1914-18 war, when he organized the orthopaedic treatment of military casualties, shaped his subsequent career and, indeed, had enormous implications for the development of orthopaedics generally. After the First World War the Institution's role changed. Its academic functions were usurped by the local medical school. What happened to the social functions remains unclear, partly because of the lack of systematic membership data in relation to statistics of the local profession. If the book lacks an analytical framework and does not place events in their national context, the wealth of material in the provinces is nevertheless amply displayed. Mr. Shepherd has made a major contribution to the history of Liverpudlian medicine and his book will provide a much-needed foundation for further investigations. Stella V. F. Butler Department of History of Science and Technology University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology