Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy, 1887-1937 by Victoria A. HardenReview by: John DuffyThe American Historical Review, Vol. 92, No. 3 (Jun., 1987), p. 755Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1870076 .

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United States 755

objectives in turn helped shape the performance of the sanitarians who occupied the enforcement boards. Examining the relationships between these groups makes this book a history of social and institutional change as well as public health.

Okun chronicles events pertaining to the control of food and drugs that were played out in Washing- ton, D.C., New Jersey, and Massachusetts, but he reserves special emphasis for New York. He is generally convincing when he argues that most of the controversies that surrounded the federal law of 1906 had already surfaced in New York by 1886; he borders on the simplistic, however, when he con- cludes that "nothing really changed" from the 1 880s to 1906 "except that the tendencies and technolog- ical complexities of modern commerce already pre- sent in New York had spread to encompass the rest of the country" (p. 295). The appearance of such personalities as Harvey W. Wiley and Robert McDowell Allen, the influential work of scientists at state agricultural stations, the effective lobbying of the Association of American Dairy, Food and Drug Officials (the organization's name changed several times), and the growth and dissemination of scien- tific knowledge especially in bacteriology all influ- enced public health legislation after 1886.

Most of the available publications pertaining to adulteration of food and drugs and efforts to effect control deal with the late nineteenth century or the twentieth century. Concentrating on developments that antedated the Progressive era, Okun's study makes a contribution to American public health history and scholarly understanding of the regula- tion of food and drugs. Therein lies the strength of this book. Unfortunately, it also has its weaknesses. Although Okun's research seems adequate and he presents interesting data, he does not tell his story advantageously. The text lacks the vitality of related work by such historians as Oscar E. Anderson, Jr., and James Harvey Young. Readers are left to make their way through a laborious presentation. The author introduces a large cast of characters and offers little assistance in sorting out their relevance. The basic chapter outline, as well as internal organ- ization within chapters, leaves a great deal to be desired. Consequently, the reader must hurdle across one chasm after another. The businessmen, charlatans, and experts-the distinctions blur-are fully presented, but one is never quite sure if the struggle over food and drugs described by this author was waged in the national, regional, state, or municipal arena.

MARGARET RIPLEY WOLFE

East Tennessee State University

VICTORIA A. HARDEN. Inventing the NIH: Federal Bio- medicalResearch Policy, 1887-1937. Baltimore: Johns

Hopkins University Press. 1986. Pp. xiii, 274. $32.50.

It is difficult to realize that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which dominate biological research in this generation, date only from the 1930s. This book recounts the gradual change in the attitude toward scientific research and the role of the gov- ernment that led Congress to create the NIH. Victoria A. Harden begins her history with the background leading to the establishment of the Hygienic Laboratory in 1887. She shows how Dr. John Shaw Billings and advocates of a national health agency clashed with the United States Marine Hospital Service and indirectly pushed it into estab- lishing the laboratory. The Hygienic Laboratory, which had little concern for the wider interest of public health, sought to keep all government health programs under its jurisdiction. In the process, it fought every effort to create a national health de- partment until well into the twentieth century.

The years 1890 to 1940 witnessed a change in the ingrained American opposition to using tax money to improve human health-as opposed to the health of domestic animals and birds. This period also saw growing awareness of the value of scientific re- search. Stimulated by its work in connection with the Spanish-American War, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, and World War I, the Hygienic Labo- ratory slowly expanded. At the end of World War I Charles Holmes Herty and a group of chemists interested in pharmaceuticals conceived of creating a national biomedical research institute. Herty and his associates assumed the funding would come from private sources. When this assumption proved false, they turned to Senator Joseph E. Ransdell of Louisiana and the federal government.

Ransdell had served in the Senate since 1912 and actively supported a series of public health mea- sures. In 1926 he introduced a bill into Congress to create a National Institute of Health to study the "fundamental diseases." In this same year the Parker bill to reorganize the Public Health Service was introduced. Harden details the four years of sparring between various interest groups and the political machinations leading to the eventual enact- ment of both laws in 1930. A final chapter surveys developments in the NIH since 1937.

The NIH is fortunate in its historian. She knows her sources, is familiar with virtually all the second- ary literature, and places the early history of the NIH in its proper economic and political context. And incidentally she has done a marvelous job of showing the intricacies of maneuvering bills through Congress.

JOHN DUFFY,

EMERITUS

University of Maryland

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