The citizen-patient in revolutionary and imperial Paris /

Culminating decades of research, Weiner's book surveys medical reform and the politics of health care in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. She eschews the famous "Paris hospital" and well-known developments in scientific medicine to focus instead on the "citizen patient" and efforts at national health care. In fine detail, the author traces the program for universal medical services initially sketched by the Poverty Committee of the National Assembly and the subsequent course of reform that variously affected nursing, midwives, pharmacy, medical students, hospitals, public health and hygiene, military medicine, and the creation of specialized facilities and treatments for the poor, the old, foundlings, the deaf, blind, and insane. Weiner successfully incorporates a previously invisible history of women into her larger story. By extending her scope to include the whole period, 1789-1815, she provides a more positive evaluation than previous accounts of medical reform in the French Revolution. Rooted in archival sources and handsomely illustrated, the book creates an evocative "you-are-there" quality for contemporary Paris. The 32-page bibliographic essay stands as a valuable guide to the history of medicine in the period. Given the great scholarly strengths of this book, its present-minded, normative element regarding debates over health care in democracies today seems unnecessary and out of place. Advanced undergraduate through faculty. J. McClellan III; Stevens Institute of Technology