David Boyd Haycock: William Stukeley: Science, Religion, and Archaeology in EighteenthCenturyEngland,William Stukeley: Science, Religion, and Archaeology in Eighteenth‐Century England byDavid Boyd  HaycockReview by: rev. by Matthew R. GoodrumIsis, Vol. 97, No. 3 (September 2006), pp. 556-557Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/509970 .

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556 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 97 : 3 (2006)

have emphasized how central notions of pater-nity and maternity and models of reproductionand inheritance are to both cosmologies and so-cial practices.Birthing the Nationis best seen inthis context.Lisa Forman Cody considers alongeighteenth

century, from the second half of the seventeenthcentury and discussions within the Royal Societyto the 1830s and the New Poor Law. One of hermain arguments is that “sex and birth . . . helpedthe British to demarcate individual and corporateidentities, including those of gender and the fam-ily” (p. 302). She suggests that major shifts inauthority occurred during the period she treats:“male experts . . . replaced female midwives,who had enjoyed a nearly exclusive control overthe world of birth and knowledge about sexualityand reproduction for centuries” (p. 3). Cody in-sists on the revolutionary nature of this change,considering a number of contexts and case stud-ies in order to illustrate her wider claims. In theprocess she draws on a wide range of sources,such as prints, plays, poems, diaries and letters,pamphlets, magazines, and institutional records.Some of the figures and examples she uses arefamiliar to historians, such as Mary Toft, whoallegedly gave birth to rabbits in 1726, and thesuccessful career of the Scot William Hunter.Cody places considerable explanatory weight onHunter’s sympathetic relationships with his cli-ents. “Evidence does exist, particularly in thecase of William Hunter, that men-midwives fa-cilitated emotional discussion with husbands andfathers, and played powerful roles in men’slives” (p. 304). She mentions Hunter’s culturalinterests in passing, and I wonder both whetherhis connoisseurship and collecting might havefacilitated these relationships and how typical hewas.It is well known that man-midwifery, one of

the most important subjects treated in the book,elicited exceptionally ferocious emotional reac-tions. Historians should always be alert to suchseemingly disproportionate reactions. It is notsurprising that there is a lot of satirical materialavailable. Many of the prints Cody uses fall intothis category. The interpretation of such sourcesis exceptionally challenging, and it can be un-clear what is properly to be inferred from them.Since some are by well-known figures, such asThomas Rowlandson and James Gillray, it mighthave been worth paying close attention to mak-ers as well as to their subject matter. Yet eventhe content of prints can be difficult to analyze,and some puzzling claims are made about them.For example, in discussingThe Village Doctor(Rowlandson, 1774), Cody notes a “marked con-

trast” with another of his prints, “of a femalemidwife braving a late-night rainstorm . . . from1811” (p. 164). To me, this implies that thewoman is more positively depicted than theman.Yet she is shown as obese, with thick lips and abottle, in a manner that has been seen by othersas distinctly hostile.We know that print makers and sellers draw

on contemporary goings-on quite opportunisti-cally—as, of course, do many writers. And arewe to read the cases in William Smellie’sTrea-tise, first published in 1752, or supposed lettersin the Sentimental Magazine(pp. 305–306)“straight”? These are difficult areas; my sense isthat it is best to treat writings on such hotly con-tested matters as, more or less, strategic fictions.They are still valuable evidence, of course, butthey testify more to affect than to practices. Cer-tainly we can agree that feelings about “sex andbirth” ran extremely high in this period and thatthey had powerful, diverse political resonances.I think it is also clear that major changes tookplace in Britain over this period with regard toreproduction and that men-midwives providedwonderfully rich material for contemporary sat-ire and commentary. We might usefully ponderfurther on the extent to which these shifts areproperly deemed “revolutionary,” given thatthey took place over a long period of time, onthe capacity of reproductive matters to be potentpolitical mediators in many societies, on the roleof artists and writers in responding to trendswithin science and medicine, and on how theirproducts are best interpreted.

LUDMILLA JORDANOVA

David Boyd Haycock.William Stukeley: Sci-ence, Religion, and Archaeology in Eighteenth-Century England. xiii � 290 pp., plates, bibl.,index. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2002.$95 (cloth).

The history of antiquarianism and archaeologyin the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries hasbegun to attract the attention of historians in re-cent years. While this has improved our under-standing of these disciplines and highlighted theimportant relationship that existed between nat-ural philosophy and early archaeology, there isstill much that remains to be explored about theactivities of antiquaries, how archaeology andnatural history shaped each other, and how an-tiquarian researches were connected with widersocial and intellectual problems. David Hay-cock’s examination of William Stukeley’s ar-chaeological and scientific career represents asignificant advance in our understanding of the

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BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 97 : 3 (2006) 557

complex relationships that archaeology in theeighteenth century had with a diverse array ofscientific, religious, philosophical, and politicalissues.Haycock believes that in order to understand

Stukeley’s works on Stonehenge and Avebury itis necessary to recognize the connection betweenhis archaeological investigations and his careerin natural philosophy. For this reason, Hay-cock’s book is divided into two sections. Thefirst describes Stukeley’s education, his career asa physician and natural philosopher, and hisclose links to Isaac Newton. Haycock argues thatStukeley inherited a set of ideas and problemsfrom Newton, some of which dealt with naturalphilosophy; but he draws on recent scholarshipabout Newton to show that Stukeley was alsoinfluenced by Newton’s extensive studies ofchronology and ancient history, as well as hisspeculations about theology.Having demonstrated the Newtonian nature of

Stukeley’s various scientific pursuits in the firstsection of the book, Haycock proceeds to ex-amine Stukeley’s archaeological studies of Brit-ain’s earliest antiquities, notably the stone circlesat Stonehenge and Avebury. Whereas some re-cent historians of archaeology have focused onthose aspects of Stukeley’s investigations thatappear recognizable as “archaeology” while ig-noring other aspects of his work—which wasfull of strange ideas about Druids and primitiveChristianity and fanciful notions of the early his-tory of Britain—Haycock situates Stukeley’sideas about Stonehenge and Avebury within theintellectual context of eighteenth-century En-gland. What emerges is a remarkable picture ofthe complexity and sophistication of eighteenth-century antiquarianism.Haycock shows how Stukeley’s interpreta-

tions of Stonehenge and Avebury were inti-mately linked to a host of problems being de-bated in the eighteenth century. Stukeley drewon the best historians and scholars of his day tolink the ancient Britons described by Romanwriters to the descendants of Noah who repop-ulated the world after the biblical deluge. Like-wise, he drew on scholars writing on natural re-ligion, primitive Christianity, and the idea of theprisca theologiato link the religion of the Druidsto an ancient wisdom inherited from Adam thathad been preserved among the Druids and wasreflected in their ancient stone circles. Moreover,Haycock finds in Stukeley’s antiquarian re-searches material that links all of these issueswith contemporary theological debates about thevalidity of the concept of the Trinity. Again,Haycock traces Stukeley’s interest in this prob-

lem in part to the Arianism of Newton and otherprominent Newtonians and the scholarly de-fenses of Trinitarianism that were spurred in theeighteenth century by this threat to orthodoxdoctrine. Stukeley drew on new scientific meth-ods and the emphasis on the importance of care-ful observation prevalent in the Royal Society,of which he was a member, in his surveys ofancient stone circles. And Stukeley’s interest inBritish antiquities, as a member of the Societyof Antiquaries, fit well in an era of increasingBritish nationalism. Thus, what emerges fromHaycock’s account of Stukeley’s antiquarian re-searches are the ways that they grew out of con-temporary cultural, intellectual, and politicalconcerns.Haycock draws on an impressive array of pri-

mary sources, many of them unpublished man-uscripts. However, he does not always utilizerelevant works of recent historians as success-fully. While the first section of the book offers avaluable account of Stukeley’s life and career innatural philosophy and is important in establish-ing its significance to Stukeley’s antiquarian re-searches, the two halves of the book are notseamlessly integrated. However, the analysis ofthe second section of the book far surpassesmuch that has been written in the history of earlyarchaeology.

MATTHEW R. GOODRUM

Claire Preston. Thomas Browne and the Writ-ing of Early Modern Science. xiv � 250 pp.,illus., bibl., index. Cambridge/New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 2005. $75 (cloth).

Sir Thomas Browne stands tantalizingly on thecusp between science and literature—intriguingfor his engagement with natural philosophythrough such works asPseudodoxia Epidemica,but perhaps better known for his metaphysicalspeculations and sonorous prose. In the seven-teenth century, Browne’s high repute derivedlargely from his learning, and he subsequentlydelighted Romantics like Samuel Taylor Cole-ridge. He has since become an established partof the literary canon. The twentieth century sawvarious monographs on him, notably those byF. L. Huntley and Joan Bennett, both publishedin 1962, while a volume of tercentenary essaysedited by C. A. Patrides appeared in 1982. Mostimportant of all, 1981 saw the publication ofRobin Robbins’s monumental edition of thePseudodoxia Epidemica, which devotes its en-tire second volume to the painstaking analysis ofBrowne’s sources.Claire Preston comes from a background in

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