For nearly four centuries a disease known as chlorosis, the green sickness or the virgin's disease, was commonly recognised. There are many references to it in literature and art from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries' -3 and numerous clinical descriptions by physicians. Until the middle of the nineteenth century there was, however, no general agreement on the cause of the disease; then...

O ne of the hallmarks of Eugene White’s scholarship is his knack for using detailed historical examples to raise large, thought-provoking questions. “Were Banks Special Intermediaries in Late Nineteenth Century America?” is no exception. White combines case studies of two small financial institutions, the Bank of A. Levy and the Emigrant Savings Bank, with other information on nineteenth-centur...