if less lively, is to adopt Auerbach’s strategy
and to concentrate on the system of classi-
fication which disposed these objects into
significant order.
That is not to say that his argument is
always convincing. One of his central con-
tentions is that, despite the explicit inter-
nationalism with which the Exhibition was
promoted, it actually carried a series of na-
tionalist, xenophobic and colonialist mean-
ings. The evidence for the xenophobia comes
much more strongly from the ‘antis’ than
from the Exhibition itself; the strong asso-
ciation of the whole enterprise with the pro-
motion of Free Trade certainly encouraged
its opponents in the anti-foreign feeling that
lurked close behind protectionism. Lots of the
coverage, in the popular press and the mass of
accompanying cheap guides, was certainly
xenophobic; it is hard here to draw a clear
distinction between the meanings generated
by the Exhibition itself, and those that it
prompted against itself, as it were. As for
the colonialism, Auerbach certainly makes a
strong case; but a reference to the highly influ-
ential work of Owen Jones (whose Grammar
of Ornament is strangely absent from an other-
wise comprehensive bibliography) would
have suggested that the Indian exhibits, in
particular, could be cited as a measure of the
paucity of British design, not its superiority.
These caveats suggest not that the Exhibition
was a blank screen upon which any meaning
could be projected, but that the calculated
intervention that its organizers made into
national life ran partly counter to, and failed
to overcome, some profound and resistant
strains in the national mentality.
Nevertheless, this is a remarkable work of
scholarship, lavishly produced. It is richly il-
lustrated, including unfamiliar material along
with the familiar. It ends with a short section
on the Festival of Britain in 1951, which
emerges as an altogether less ambitious affair
than its predecessor; perhaps the state of
national exhaustion after the Second World
War is sufficient to account for that. So per-
haps the naïve and ambitious organizers of
the original Exhibition were not so wrong in
associating its success with the blessings of
peace – though the bathos of the Millennium
Dome should remind us that peace itself, how-
ever imperfect, is no guarantee of success in
such large public events. At all events, the rich
and contradictory text of 1851, including the
Crystal Palace as much as the Exhibition it
contained, receives here a rich and stimu-
lating analysis.
Simon Dentith
48 Endeavour Vol. 24(1) 2000
Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other
Medical Marvels
by R. and M. Root-Bernstein
Macmillan, 1999.
£12.99 hardback (279 pages)
ISBN 0 333 75038 1
I was at our neighborhood swimming pool
reading the new book by the Root-Bernsteins,
Honey, Mud, Maggots and Other Medical
Marvels, when one of our neighbors me-
andered over and started to chat. In the course
of our conversation, I remarked on how well
he looked. Obviously pleased by my spon-
taneous comment, he related the saga of his
recent odyssey into the world of medicine.
A few years ago, he said, he began to feel
vaguely unwell, lost weight and developed re-
current diarrhea. He saw a number of physi-
cians, but no one seemed to understand his
problem or even to take his affliction very seri-
ously. At long last, he resorted to a Chinese
herbalist. This practitioner of ancient Chinese
remedies explained that the body’s energy is
channeled along ‘meridians’. My friend’s
meridians had gone haywire, because he was
eating the wrong foods. After a long, and ap-
parently somewhat expensive, course of treat-
ment, a number of foods were incriminated,
which my friend was admonished to avoid at
all costs. His health, he said, improved re-
markably over the next few months, but he
was continuing with his healer, because they
were now concentrating on environmental
chemicals that were disturbing his meridians.
At this point, my friend looked a bit em-
barrassed, recalling that I am a physician.
Of course I do not believe in such things, he
said. No, I assured him, in medicine any-
thing that works is good, even if we do not
understand it. My friend seemed reassured
by this medical endorsement and, to the best
of my knowledge, is now plowing through
the universe of ‘environmental chemicals’
that are troubling his ‘meridians’.
This little tale illustrates the theme of this
book. The Root-Bernsteins have collected a
volume full of ‘old-wives tales’ and describe
how, where and when these curatives evolved.
They range from familiar themes, such as the
value of licking a wound (recalling the anti-
microbial agents of saliva!), to some rather ex-
otic descriptions of geophagy or clay-eating
(a precursor of our micronutrient pills!).
Each chapter is a fascinating journey through
humankind’s search for the perfect remedy,
a magic healing potion. There remains, how-
ever, the serious issue that some of our most
efficacious remedies have been introduced by
a few of these old-wives tales. The authors cite
Edward Jenner’s conception of cowpox inocu-
lation as an effective vaccine against small-
pox, William Wuthering’s identification of
foxglove, the source of digitalis, as treatment
for heart failure, and the Indians’ use of cin-
chona bark, leading to the discovery of quinine
as an antimalarial drug. Indeed, the story con-
tinues to the present day, when a number of
pharmaceutical companies are assessing the
value of some ‘ancient Chinese remedies’ for
the manufacture of new and effective drugs.
In many ways, the most useful chapter in the
book is the last one, which describes the prob-
lems of extrapolating folk wisdom into the
modern pharmacopeia. The authors recognize
the enormous placebo effect that ensues from
a patient’s confidence in his healer. They point
out the risk inherent in unstandardized folk
remedies and the lack of safety testing and
emphasize the common tendency of patients
to assume that a treatment effective for one
disorder must be effective for many others.
To be acceptable a drug must be both safe
and efficacious and undergo double-blind
control, clinical trials. Yet, in many instances,
such trials are simply not feasible because of
the nature of the treatment, the rarity of the
disease, or the economics of marketing non-
patented drugs. The book offers a challenge
to modern medicine to remain open-minded
to new ideas, even if they are repackaged
old remedies yet, and to still maintain high
standards of objective testing and verifi-
cation. The authors offer no easy answers,
but they do provide us with an enjoyable
and thought-provoking summer’s reading.