it, are all points on which as yet historians remain ignorant.

A. Ruperf Hall

The Montgolfier Brothers and the Invention of Aviation. By C. C. Gillispie. Pp. 212. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 7983. f30.20.

On 4 June 1783 the brothers Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier launched a balloon containing air heated by a fire of wool and straw. Hydrogen balloons were developed by others and within six months Frenchmen had flown in both types. Professor Gillispie, who studied private archives of the Mont- goltier family as well as public records, does not aim to give a history of early aeronau- tics, but examines the contributions of the Montgolfiers and their colleagues while re- ferring briefly to other pioneers. He in- creases our knowledge of the Montgolfiers’ work of 178H, but fails to point out that originally they believed their balloons to contain a gas formed by the combustion of animal matter and not merely hot air. He also describes Etienne’s later plan for a man-powered dirigible and a similar project by Meusnier, neither of which left the drawing board.

Gillispie shows how Etienne became head of the family paper-making business and Joseph made further inventions, notably the hydraulic ram, a device for raising water. They were great-uncles of Marc Seguin, the engineer, and we are given a laudatory account of Seguin’s suspension bridges and steam engines. Too specialised for most individual purchasers, this well-illustrated book is recommended for libraries con- cerned with the history of technology.

W. A. Smeaton

Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures. Edited by Aidan and Eve Cockbum. Pp. 243. Cambridge University Press. 1983. Paperback f9,95.

The appearance of the paperback edition of Mummies, Disease and Ancient Cultures must be welcomed. It is a thorough and wide-ranging review of the types of mummy (deliberate or accidental) found in various parts of the world. This includes not only the classic mummies from Ancient Egypt but mummies from Peru and North Amer- ica. The bog bodies from Denmark are discussed as well as Japanese mummies and preserved bodies of Ancient Scythians.

Robert Friedel, who was a Research Fel- low at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, has assembled a cohe- rent history of the commercial innovation of celluloid from its origins in the 1860s until its eclipse in the inter-war period. He clearly demonstrates the importance of the creation of new outlets and markets for celluloid and suggests that this was more important for celluloid’s success than the technical aspects. However the technical side is well covered without excessive detail. Friedel also examines the social aspects of the innovation and the question of the ‘social image’ of this early synthetic material. He clearly shows, for example, how celluloid only really succeeded in contrast to later plastics, as a substitute for natural materials like ivory, horn, and linen. There is a small but interesting case-study of the substitution of horn by celluloid in the comb industry. Celluloid’s main significance, he argues, was in enlarging man’s material capabilities. In this way it was an invaluable forerunner for the first fully synthetic plastics like bakelite, the origins of which Friedel outlines in his final chapter.

Chapters are included on various indi- vidual scientific investigations of particular mummies and on different mummification techniques. Disease in Ancient Egypt is described by the late A. T. Sandison and another discussion by the late Aidan Cock- burn is included in the chapter on Peruvian mummies. These two papers and one on

‘Pioneer Plastic’, is a very readable and thought-provoking account of an early in- novation of a synthetic material. I have only two minor criticisms. More attention could have been given to the influence of celluloid manufacture on the technology of, for ex- ample, polyvinyl chloride and perhaps more could have been made of the connection between the outlook and tastes of the late Victorians and the restriction of celluloid to the status of a substitute. At f15 for 114 pages of text it is rather expensive.

Peter Morris

dental disease are an informative introduc- tion to the discipline of paleopathology which had its beginning in Ancient Egyptian studies at the turn of the century.

This book is a most useful and interesting introduction for all those who want to know more about that perennially fascinating sub- ject of mummies, and there is a generous bibliography at the end of each chapter for those who wish to pursue the subject further.

Juliet Rogers

Pioneer Plastic. The Making and Selling of Celluloid. By Robert Friedel. Pp. 153. University of Wisconsin Press, London. 7983. f 75.00.

Given the present-day ubiquity of plastics it is surprising that so little attention has been given to the question of its origins. ‘Pioneer Plastic’ (sic) is an excellent attempt to try to answer the question ‘How did the synthetic materials so common today become an accepted part of our everyday life?’ by studying the development of the first com- mercially viable plastics, celluloid.

The Cambridge Illustrated History of the World’s Science. By Co/in A. Ronan. Pp. 540. Cambridge University Press and

Newnes Books, Feltham. 1983. f 12.95.

This is a scholarly work, succinctly written and packed with authoritative information. It fills a clear gap in the literature for at present there is really no comprehensive history of science suitable for student use. This apart, experienced workers will find it a valuable work of reference.

In planning a work of this magnitude, covering so many disciplines over so long a period of time, it is idle to expect that an ideal formula will ever emerge. All have defects and present problems, and the au- thor must make the best choice he can in the light of his own knowledge and experi- ence and then stick to it. Thus to say that Colin Ronan might have done certain things differently is not at all the same as saying that overall he has not done well.

The author devotes the first six chapters to what may be called regional science: Greek science, Chinese science (where his current abridgment of Joseph Needham’s great work stands him in good stead), Arabian science, etc. The remaining four chapters are globally conceived covering the Renaissance and the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries respectively. This is logical, in that up to the Scientific Revolution the various schools of science did develop large- ly in isolation, though perhaps not so great an isolation as is generally supposed: only afterwards can one begin to discern a scien- ce developing on one broad front. There is, however, a lack of balance in this presenta- tion, for we are almost two-thirds of the way through the book before we reach the Scientific Revolution, which the author him- self concedes to be ‘a period in which modern science was finally launched’. This prolonged early part is overloaded with astronomy-though undeniably this was the first of the precise physical sciences to emerge-and by comparison the 20th cen- tury, in which the tempo increased dramati- cally, receives relatively cursory treatment.

In his Preface the author states that he is primarily concerned with scientific develop- ments that have brought about conceptual change, thus putting the book in the same sort of category as Charles Singer’s ‘Short History of Scientific Ideas’ (1959). This is defensible, but it has resulted in some unexpected omissions. For example, there is no mention of modern chemotherapy in general, nor of the sulphonamides or peni- cillin in particular. Yet surely these owed much to the concept of differential toxicity, that ‘magic bullets’ could indeed exist cap- able of destroying pathogenic bacteria but leaving human tissue unaffected.

For a generously illustrated book of 540 closely printed pages, the price is extraordi- narily low at f12.95. This presumably indi- cates that the publishers expect large sales, eventually in paperback, and this the book certainly deserves.

Trevor I. Williams

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