She presents the campaign to obliterate the trade in reproductive control as very largely orchestrated by Comstock and his supporters. New interventionist agendas concerning the physical and moral health of the nation extended well beyond the doctors' campaign to improve their professional status, which Brodie does discuss. Questions also arise as to the precise relationship between the methods she describes and the decline in the birth rate. A range of approved female hygienic practices involving douching and pessaries, Brodie points out, could have influenced, not necessarily intentionally, the likelihood of impregnation. A possibly productive analogy is the present obsession with slimming.
Diets are likely to succeed if, however they achieve it, they get people eating less.
The plethora of books on the topic ranges from those aligned with current approved scientific ideas about nutrition to those very distant from them. A slimming industry flourishes, while on the one hand, obesity is actually increasing, and on the other, so are eating disorders. This is, however, asking for improvements to a book already very good and very rich. It raises stimulating questions about popular health movements, the communication of knowledge, the spread of print culture, the rise of consumer society and the role of advertising, about public disapproval of practices pursued in private, as well as making an important contribution to the already distinguished field of the history of birth control. Lesley Hall Contemporary Medical Archives Centre Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine London, England.