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Reviews of Books
drawn this out more explicitly. There is, for example, a
lack of engagement with Stephen L. Harp's outstanding study of popular schooling in the same region,
Leaming to be Loyal: Primaly Schooling and Nationbuilding in Alsace and Lorraine, 1850-1940 (1998).
How does Hopkin's argument about the lack of explicit
patriotism in references to the army in his oral and
visual sources mesh with the messages taught to children in their self-consciously patriotic textbooks? A
hallmark of fine scholarship is, of course, to raise wider
questions such as this. Hopkin's book is the product of
meticulous research and high intelligence, expressed in
superb prose, and finely produced.
PETER MCPHEE
University of Melbourne
W. PAUL. Bacchic Medicine: Wine and Alcohol
Therapies from Napoleon to the French Paradox. (Clio
HARRY
Medica, number 64.) New York: Editions Rodopi B.V.
2001. Pp. vii, 341. Cloth $75.00, paper $28.00.
Harry W. Paul is well known for his studies of nineteenth-century French science and for Science, Vine
and Wine in Modern France (1996). Here Paul pursues
the oenological theme with his customary prodigious
research, enthusiasm for detail, and dry wit, this time
with a focus on the therapeutic uses of wine.
An opening chapter deals with wine's ubiquitous
role in folk medicine over the centuries: it was a
panacea "nearly as important as shit" (p. 8). For most
of modern French history, professional medical men
(and at least one woman in the 1930s), supported by
chemists, attached cardinal value to the fruit of the
vine in coping with a broad range of diseases and
preserving health: wine was la plus hygiènique des
boissons in Louis Pasteur's often-echoed phrase. Paul
traces the vicissitudes of vinothérapie from the first
professional treatise devoted to the subject by a German physician in 1816 to the ultimate and perhaps
irreversible decline following World War II, as designer drugs with scientistic pretensions replaced traditional remedies. In broad outline, the therapeutic
use of wine enjoyed peak popularity during the first
half of the nineteenth century, with the pharmacopeia
listing more than 200 prescriptions based on wines and
elaborate distinctions in efficacy according to growing
region, quality of vintage and class of the patient. Not
surprisingly, the great Bordeaux and Burgundies were
administered to the well to do while the masses, in
illness as in health, had to be content with lesser cru.
Laudanum, remembered today for its narcotic content,
contained five times more Malaga than opium. The
sick, Paul remarks, sometimes imbibed under medical
supervision "amounts of alcohol that would kill
healthy people" (p. 74).
After 1870, the use of medicinal wines declined. The
Lancet abruptly turned against them, although the
same British medical journal still pronounced the
clinical value of red clarets "exceedingly great." Why
therapeutic wines lost their fashionability remains
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
unclear. Paul cites controversies and compromises
over various chemical additives, notably wine "plastering" with potassium sulfate, but attributes relatively
little importance to the organized anti-alcoholism
movement. Indeed, even most critics firmly believed
that "natura!" wine, unlike other alcoholic beverages,
posed little danger to the organism. In wine country,
where men drank three to four liters daily, drunkenness and its pathological consequences, alcoholism and
cirrhosis, were said to be rare, if not unknown.
In the twentieth century, especially during the interwar period, medicinal wines had a "renaissance." But
prevention and nutrition now took precedence over
therapy. Favorable testimonies were ,cited from eminent hygienists of the Paris medical faculty (one of
whom owned a Burgundy vineyard), leaders of the
Pasteur Institute, and government experts on demography, to say nothing of the rank and file of doctors. In
1933, the first "medical congress of the friends of
wine" met at Bordeaux and published their proceedings. Surveys indicated that more than fifty percent of
responding physicians prescribed wine and fully seventy-five percent considered it useful. Some even put
wine on a par with water cures. Controlled animal
experiments noted beneficial effects; wine-fed horses
proved healthier and stronger than the "teetotalers."
The analogy was obvious: the working classes would
also benefit from the judicious coup de fouet (whiplash)
of a glass of wine (p. 230). Despite all this, wine never
achieved official drug status or recognition in the
medical curriculum, although some professors gave
lectures on the subject.
In conclusion, Paul reviews postwar and recent
literature on the "French paradox" (i.e. the hypothesis
that wine consumption might neutralize the cardiovascular consequences of a rich diet and account for
supposed greater longevity among the French). He
remains skeptical but reminds us that medical therapy,
indeed all scientific activity, is culturally constructed
and deconstructed. This leaves open, at least in principle, the possibility (or hope?) of a resurgence of the
ancient tradition of wille therapy buttressed, as in the
past, by contemporary "science."
Parts of this densely written and deceptively erudite
study (the endnotes are copious) can be heavy going.
But leavened by sparkling anecdote and mordant
humor, the book is never imbuvable. When the connoisseur of wine takes over, readers who have not
shared first-hand experience at Paul's table can savor
the vicarious pleasure from a rich historical offering.
TOBY GELFAND
University of Ottawa
NIGEL ROTHFELS. Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the
Modern Zoo. (Animals, History, Culture.) Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 268.
Carl Hagenbeck was a household name in Germany
around the turn of the century, perhaps the only one
more likely than Karl May to evoke images of exotic
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2003
Europe: Early Modern and Modern
adventure among Germans. It was Hagenbeck who
made Viiikerschauen (people shows) a common occurrence in European cities, transformed the animal
trades across much of the world, and, according to
Nigel Rothfels, did more than any other individual to
shape the modern zoo. Historians and other scholars
interested in German colonialism, anthropology, the
natural sciences, and the transformation of visual
culture around the turn of the century, continue to be
intrigued by Hagenbeck, and many will welcome this
volume.
Hagenbeck's zoo has long been regarded as the
model for those that followed. Scientists and other
visitors hailed it as a significant advance over older
zoological gardens. It was the first to provide visitors
with ostensibly happy animals in natural settings, free
from bars, cages, and, by implication, duress. The
welfare of animals appeared to be paramount, and
their preservation as important as their display. This
impression fits well with the institutional histories of
zoos that were already appearing in the nineteenth
century, histories that narrated a continual shift in the
character of zoos toward more orderly, scientific, and
humane institutions. Like most institutional histories,
however, these were, and too often remain, rather
whiggish. Rothfels warns that because they reify both
the alleged disorder of earlier collections and the
sciéntific and humane character of modern zoos, they
"should be accepted only with great caution" (p. 39).
Such narratives obscure the commercial motivations
behind the transformation of zoos, and they obfuscate
the ways in which zoos remain primarily places for
people rather than animals. Rothfels contends that the
successful verisimilitude in modern zoos has worked
on scholars and visitors alike; we easily forget that the
apparent freedom of the animals is projected to make
customers happy, the enclosures effectively silence the
animals by eliminating any evidence of their captivity
or discomfort, and as a result, the moral self-reflection
on the consumption of animals that once accompanied
their presentation in cages has been stifled, eliminated
by a happy facade.
This is much more than a history of Hagenbeck's
many successes. It is an historical explanation for why
the environments of zoos today are meant to mask the
human character of the places in which animals are
forced to live their unnatural lives. Rothfels argues
that economics rather than moral convictions drove
the shift toward seemingly humane zoos, and Hagenbeck played a critical role in this evolution because of
his world wide connections and financial success. His
business became a virtual nexus of the animal trades by
the late nineteenth century, supplying exotic animals
to a range of individuals and institutions around the
globe, but he also established his own circus, participated in world's fairs, and created his people shows, all
of which contributed to the shape of his zoo.
Rothfels contends that the shifting desires of urban
publics also guided Hagenbeck's decisions (although
he makes no effort to explain what drove the public).
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1229
Hagenbeck recognized an increasing desire for authentic nature during his people shows; "primitive"
groups that conformed to, rather than challenged,
stereotypical images were the most successful. But this
staged authenticity became difficult to maintain after
the turn of the century. Rothfels relates how members
of Hagerbook's troupes increasingly stepped out of
character: adopting European dress, drinking beer,
and bartering with visitors in German. Film, photography, and popular magazines soon usurped his shows
with images that "did not talk back." Animals, however, could not learn German, they could be placed in
natura! settings, and Rothfels argues that Hagenbeck's
work in the circus taught him that they also could be
trained to conform to public expectations. The tremendous success of panoramas at the end of the century
gave Hagenbeck insight into the kinds of settings that
appealed; controversies over the treatment of animals
during collecting attuned him to public discomfort
with abusive conditions. His park-like zoo was thus a
calculated response to these public interests, but it
enhanced his business as well: it allowed him to keep
large numbers of animals together and healthy until
they could be sold, show that they could be acclimated
to European conditions, and thus simultaneously increase the scale of his business, preserve his assets, and
encourage the creation of more zoos that he could
later supply. In all these ways, Hagenbeck's became a
spatial and institutional cipher for the development of
the modern zoo, one that reveals much about the
motivations and interests that shaped these institutions.
H. GLENN PENNY
University of Iowa
JAMES M.
STAYER. Martin Luther, German Saviour:
German Evangelical Theological Factions and the Interpretation of Luther, 1917-1933. (McGill-Queen's Stud-
ies in the History of Religion.) Montreal and Kingston:
McGill-Queen's University Press. 2000. Pp. xiv, 177.
The direction of Protestant theology underwent a sea
change in Germany during World War I and the
subsequent Weimar Republic. Before the war, academie liberal theologians (above all Albrecht Ritschl
and Adolf Harnack) held pride of place for trying to
distill the essence of Christianity through historical
research. Afterward, dogmatic theologians reached for
the plum of theological prominence. James M. Stayer
analyzes this seemingly abrupt shift, the three dogmatic "schools" that then emerged, and their interpretations of Martin Luther's theology. Regarding Luther
as a systematic theologian, they laid the basis for
interpretations that prevailed into the 1960s in Germany and elsewhere.
First in the field was the "Luther Renaissance," the
school of its founder, Karl Holl, and later of Emanuel
Hirsch and Erich Vogelsang. The dialectica) theologians, Karl Barth and Friedrich Gogarten, are analyzed as well. Stayer regards the third school of
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