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Mary Wilson Carpenter. Health, Medicine, and Society in Victorian England. Victorian Life and Times. Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, 2010. xvii + 214 pp. Ill. $44.95 (978-0-313-06542-2).
The history of health, medicine, and society in Victorian England has been well explored in monographs and textbooks for some thirty years but still attracts study. As scholarship moves on, new syntheses have their merits, and Mary Wilson Carpenter's volume is no exception. Carpenter takes a literary and gendered approach to the topic, drawing extensively on fiction, poetry, memoirs, diaries, and letters for contemporary illustration and emphasizing issues around women and class. The book is clearly and engagingly written, intended as an introduction for students or a general readership. Those working in this period of English medical history will find much that is familiar, as Carpenter covers professional relationships, infectious diseases, and women. Two chapters on deafness and blindness offer a perceptive and more original contribution to the wider field. Nonetheless the organization of the book is somewhat...