American Midwives: 1860 to the Present

The author addresses his book to the undergraduate, offering him an introduction to the history of science in the seventeenth century.He hopes that it will form a coherent interpretation of the scientific revolution, seen by him as constituting the interaction of two main themes: the Platonic-Pythagorean tradition, which con- sidered nature to be based on the principles of mathematical order; the mechanistic philosophy, which looked at nature as a gigantic machine, the hidden mechanisms of which had to be sought.These two approaches and their resultant conflicts affected the life sciences and chemistry.There is, therefore, a chapter on 'Mechanical chemistry' and one on 'Biology and the mechanical philosophy'.All those, therefore, who are concerned with the history of medicine or biology in the seventeenth century must be aware of this excellent, scholarly work.