History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

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  Joseph Jones, M.D.: Scientist of the Old South

  Of the many books written over the past century about the Old South and the American Civil War, a very few explore the scientific history of the South or the medical history of the war itself. In the first volume of this impressive biography of Joseph Jones, Mr. Breeden does much to illuminate the development of scientific thought and of medicine in the nineteenth-century South.

  Jones was far in advance of most of his fellow physicians. The thoroughness of his research, the tenacity of his effort, and the brilliance of his findings won him respect while he was still a ...Read More

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  Engineering in American Society: 1850–1875

  Technology, which has significantly changed Western man’s way of life over the past century, exerted a powerful influence on American society during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. In this study Raymond H. Merritt focuses on the engineering profession, in order to describe not only the vital role that engineers played in producing a technological society but also to note the changes they helped to bring about in American education, industry, professional status, world perspectives, urban existence, and cultural values.

  During the development period of 1850-1875, engineers erected bridges, blasted tunnels, designed machines, improved rivers and harbors, developed utilities ...Read More

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  French Inventions of the Eighteenth Century

  The eighteenth century, age of France’s leadership in Western civilization, was also the most flourishing period of French inventive genius. Generally obscured by England’s great industrial development are the contributions France made in the invention of the balloon, paper-making machines, the steamboat, the semaphore telegraph, gas illumination, the silk loom, the threshing machine, the fountain pen, and even the common graphite pencil. Shelby T. McCloy believes that these and many other inventions which have greatly influenced technological progress made prerevolutionary France the rival, if not the leader, of England.

  In his book McCloy analyzes the factors that led to France’s ...Read More