Reseñas

442  RESEISÏAS preconizó una invasión antiabsolutista a través de los Pirineos). La relevancia como químico y como político del mencionado autor no puede verse reflejada en la selección de textos, enfocados, dado el caràcter de la colección, a temas higiénicos o de intervención sanitaria a gran escala. Su figura aparece como representativa del bullicioso mundo científico-médico de la Esparsa ilustrada, tràgicamente frustrado por la prolongada represión absolutista de los gobiernos de Fernando VII. Y no cabe descartar la hipótesis de que fuera precisamente esa situación la respondable del aumento de activismo político de Aréjula a partir de 1814, en paralelo decaimiento de su actividad científica y pedagógica, privado de sus puestos públicos y constreftidas sus expectativas de promoción, para terminar perseguido incluso después de muerto, como significativamente resalta Carrillo al final de su estudio. ESTEBAN RODRÍGUEZ OCAÑA MÜLLER, Rainer; MILLES, Dietrich (eds.) (1984), Beitrdge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterkrankheiten und der Arbeitsmedizin in Deutschland, Dortmund: Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz. Sonderschrift Nr. 15. (Wirtschaftsverlag NW, Verlag für neue Wissenschaft, Bremerhaven). The history of social medicine was for many years merely a chronicle of scientific discoveries and observations. With rare excepcions, the social context of discoveries and actual living and working conditions were neglected. The underlying positivism of earlier historical approaches was because social medicine was striving for recognition as part of scientific medicine. It became limited in its concerns and methods in order to establish its credentials as part —albeit a reforming part— of medicat science. Recent years have seen a new interest in the origins of social medicine, and criticat discussion of the merits of a strictly scientific approach. The book under review exemplifies a number of features of the reorientation of values in occupational health as part of social medicine. The title indicates that the book's scope will be extensive. Occupational diseases will be considered in relation to occupational medicine. This history of how actual conditions of morbidity and mortality related to theoretical innovations goes beyond the idea of a purely laboratory based occupational pathology. A feature of the book is that diverse interests are represented. Contributions are provided by practising occupational physicians, medicat sociologists, medicat students (for whom historical research has an educative value of providing insight into social factors associated with diseases), and social historians. The Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz is to be congratulated for its imaginative support of such a cooperative project. The introduction makes clear that initially the plan was far more ambitious with the establishing of permanent exhibition. The book appropriately begins with a document relating to the 1889 exhibition for accident prevention. This suggests that there were ideas and schemes in the past which were in certain ways RESE1ZIAS  443 superior to those of the present. The authors invoke the concept of Dethematisierung to suggest that the advance of science has suppressed social perspectíves. The point is important: scientific progress does not necessarily bring gains to medicine in its fundamental sense of improving the health conditions of groups in the population. The book is a mixture of new research and documents. Alfons Labisch provides a masterly overview of approaches to the history of occupational health. This is a valuable exercise in the defining of social history of medicine. Rainer Muller analyses why adequate occupational health statistics were prevented from developing. Dietrich Milles looks at how social perspectives have been excluded from occupational diseases in favour of scientific approaches. Case studies of particular diseases are chapters on TB, mercury poisoning, toxicology, bakers' and printers' illnesses, discoveries associated with housing, and protection of women workers. A third section covers major pioneers of occupational health like Koelsch, Teleky and Sommerfeld. For each of there the turn of the century was an exceptionally fruitful period. Hubenstorf, Milles and Rodríguez Ocañarovide an exemplary study of the background to Teleky's work in occupational medicine. Teleky's career is instructive as although he gained the first teaching post in social medicine, he encountered many theoretical and practicat difficulties. In the 1920s Teleky's normative social science of social medicine was superceded in Vienna by Heinrich Reichel's biologistic and racial approach. Given the growing appreciation that most of the social medicine of the 1920s and 30s was based on eugenic and biological categories, Teleky's economically based concept of social medicine is a refreshing and worthy exception. Three concluding chapters by. Milles (one written with Paul Klein) develop themes of the book regarding legislation, social insurance and the role of medicat inspectors of factories. These chapters show the problematic relations of occupational medicine to sickness insurance or (in the case of Koelsch) to toxicology. Important lessons are to be learnt, as, for example, over the limitations of a system depending on establishing liability. Finally, there is a fifty page bibliography. This book has important status as the first publication indicating the value of the social history of occupational health for understanding past and present health conditions. It is to be hoped that this will be the first of many such books. PAUL WEINDLING MAESTRE SANCHEZ, Amador (1985) El cólera en Santander (La epidemia del afío 1834). Santander, Ediciones Ayuntamiento de Santander (Colección Puertochico núm. 3) y Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca (Serie Varia, Temas Científicos, Literarios e Históricos, núm. 60) 380 p4s. 1.000 pesetas. Se nos ofrece a través del trabajo de doctorado de Amador Maestre, profesor Titular de Medicina Preventiva y Social de la Universidad de Santander según reza la