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The passive role of the doctor in all this did not appeal to those who looked for a scientific approach. The advent of artificial pneumothorax, popularly known as 'collapse therapy' when the diseased lung was rested by introducing air into the pleural space, seemed to supply the need felt by the profession for more active intervention. This was to be further supplemented by the emergence of specialist thoracic surgeons who by rib resection and nerve destruction could produce a more dramatic and more permanent result. Patients gave themselves a hierarchical ranking related to the scale of intervention. In the end there was no evidence that collapse therapy had had any major effect on the course of the disease, (p. 259) The relationship of medical treatment to social needs is untendentiously demonstrated in this first-class study. Holistic medicine is shown in its natural setting. Sir Arthur MacNalty maintained in 1939 that 'A striking feature of the modern outlook on tuberculosis is the public recognition of its social and economic setting. Tuberculosis is no longer solely a disease of medical significance and relegated entirely to the physician and surgeon.' (p. 96) Linda Bryder demonstrates that it never was and furthermore that 'two important aspects of the post-second world war welfare state, a national health service and social security, were being advocated in the inter- war period in the context of tuberculosis.' (p. 96) The arguments that had continued for generations over the comparative importances of pathogenic virulence of the bacteria, immunity, heredity, deprivation by malnutrition or overcrowding, and the stress of unemployment had a particular relevance for Wales, where so much of the battle was fought. Tuberculosis is now curable by chemotherapy, but it has not yet disappeared. JOHN CULE University of Wales College of Medicine BRITISH GEOGRAPHY, 1918-1945. Edited by Robert W. Steel. Cambridge University Press, 1987. Pp. 189. £ 25.00. British geography has always had a pragmatic and applied core based on a tradition of working on places and areas where practical questions of everyday life cannot be avoided. This is one of the themes that comes through strongly in this volume which presents reviews of geography at British universities between 1918 and 1945. Given the small numbers of university geographers at this time it is remarkable how much of their work was of national importance. Dudley Stamp at the London School of Economics, for example, though better known for his school textbooks, was the creator and sustainer of the 1930s National Land Utilisation Survey which made such a major contribution to the development of planning in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s. Alfred Steers at Cambridge produced a coastal survey of England and Wales which was used as a basis for subsequent coastal conservation and the development of National Parks in Britain. Daysh at Newcastle further demonstrated the practical value