The Empty Cradle

976 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Institute (as a division of the National Institutes ofHealth) and estab­ lished the National Heart Advisory Council to review grants for re­ search and training programs (p. 106). Private insurance and Medi­ care put the specialists’ care within financial reach of the growing population of elderly Americans; at the same time, physicians could take advantage of continuing medical education opportunities, in­ cluding seminars sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry and the increased federal support for community hospitals in the 1960s. Car­ diology flourished in the 1970s as increased numbers of physicians entered the field to run the coronary care units established in com­ munity hospitals and used powerful new diagnostic and therapeutic procedures made available by developments in coronary angiogra­ phy, bypass graft surgery, and nuclear medicine. Fye supports his discussion of cardiology with an impressive ap­ pendix that offers statistical portraits of research funds, faculty posi­ tions, and cardiac operations. In addition, many photographs, graphs, and charts taken from contemporary journals, association minutes, and advertisements appear throughout the text. Minor problems with repetition and technical terminology, the latter no­ ticeable to cardiologists but less so to the historian, do not signifi­ cantly detract from Fye’s text. Indeed, clinicians and historians alike will find Fye’s study informative and enjoyable. Fye’s survey of cardiology demonstrates how the study of a single medical specialty or discipline can successfully illuminate trends in medical practice, scientific research, and the medical marketplace. He offers a model that historians exploring specialties in the disci­ plines of medicine, public health, and science might fruitfully emu­ late. Carolyn G. Shapiro-Shapin Dr. Shapiro-Shapin teaches history at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. Her dissertation, “The Scientific Community and Typhoid Prevention: Public Health and the Chicago Drainage Case, 1900-1906” (Yale University, 1993), explores public health research in the Midwest. The Empty Cradle: Infertility in Americafrom Colonial Times to the Present. By Margaret Marsh and Wanda Ronner. Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Pp. xiii+326; illustrations, notes, index. $29.95 (cloth). This book was written by two sisters: Margaret Marsh is a historian, Wanda Ronner, an obstetrician/gynecologist. Together they pres­ ent a smoothly flowing account of the way infertility was both man­ aged and experienced in the United States from the 1800s to the present. Because of the clarity of the prose and the way the authors situate the issue of infertility socially and culturally, The Empty Cradle technology and culture Booh Reviews 977 should be a valuable resource for couples struggling with infertility today. The authors make use of a wide range of primary sources, includ­ ing the casebooks of the Women’s Hospital in New York City, the records of the Committee for Research in Problems of Sex in the Bureau of Social Hygiene Archive, John Rock’s papers at Harvard, popular periodicals and memoirs, as well as a small survey they con­ ducted with women who experienced infertility from the 1940s to the 1980s. They also use many excellent secondary sources on the history of American medicine and women’s health to craft a strong narrative. One of the primary aims of the book is to counteract the view that the medicalization of infertility is a recent phenomenon. Marsh and Ronner trace the beginnings of this medicalization in the United States to the 18th century. They describe the flamboyant James Graham (1745-94), who had a lucrative practice in the United States and Britain treating barrenness with his “magnetic throne,” “electric bath,” and vibrating “celestial bed,” and document other holistic treatments popular during the era of “medical democ­ racy.” As for the allopathic medicalization of sterility, they cite a 1797 dissertation byjames Walker, “An Inquiry into the Causes of Sterility in Both Sexes, with Its Method of Cure,” written for the University of Pennsylvania medical school. Following the lead of his instructors there who were in the process of successfully medicalizing child­ birth, Walker suggested that physicians wrest the diagnosis and treat­ ment of infertility from midwives. This they did, but the process took the better part of the 19th century. Nevertheless, many of the repro­ ductive technologies often assumed to be part of

Currency · Family medicine · Medical education · Political science · Population · Public relations · Specialty · History · Medical History and Innovations · Medical History and Research · Medicine