The papers of Frederick Law Olmstead, vol. IV, Defending the Union: the Civil War and the U. S. Sanitary Commission 1861–1863

disease. One first-class original contribution, by John Brooke, compares the images of Whewell and Priestley as nineteenth-century caricatures embellished by twentieth-century sociologists. McEvoy summarizes his well-documented analysis of Priestley. Many ofthe other papers, based on exegesis ofparticular sides of Priestley's complex thoughts, connect perhaps too little with the original significance of the man: his chemical experiments and indeed with the catalogue at the back of the book. However the volume does provide an impression of the intellectual anatomy of this eccentric and elusive figure. One does begin to look at the well-reproduced pictures of his apparatus with a better sense of his Faustian world. Historians looking for a fascinating project should read the book and dream.