Claire Jones's interdisciplinary and innovative study The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914 brings together for the first time the methodologies of historians of medicine, of technology and of print culture and convincingly demonstrates how the medical trade catalogue illuminates the development and practices of medical professionals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Her exploration of the medical catalogues that flourished in the period from 1870 onwards revolves around the medical profession's response to and active engagement with them. At a time when medical professionals had started developing a strict code of ethics aimed at deterring doctors from being involved in partnerships with tradesmen and other commercial ventures in the medical marketplace, the contributions of doctors to the medical catalogues were viewed as beneficial to the profession. Specifically, a number of doctors, including Robert Saundby, professor of medicine at the University of Birmingham, were keen to develop their own instruments which would subsequently feature in medical trade catalogues. As Jones explains, the audience for medical trade catalogues was almost exclusively qualified medical professionals, and the medical catalogue adopted the language and presentation of scientific publications – even its physical elements evoked those of a medical reference book. In this way it proved a substantial manual that informed medical practitioners about recent developments in medicine and in the design and production of instruments and in other electro-medical equipment used by surgeons and dentists and in orthopaedics. Medical companies abundantly produced such catalogues to advertise their products to medical professionals. Indeed, Jones's study includes a lengthy appendix that lists approximately four hundred trade catalogues (produced by 101 companies) that she unearthed through archival research at numerous university libraries and museums and the archive collections of pharmaceutical and other companies.

Jones emphasizes how her methodological framework is informed by the work of medical historians, including Paul Starr and his highly influential The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry (1982). Starr proposed that medical competence is distinguished by cognitive, moral and collegial characteristics, and Jones has translated this conceptual framework to the British context to understand the diverse ways through which doctors interacted with the medical trade catalogues. She is also in conversation with a number of medical historians who explored the economic reality and the medical-professional markets in which doctors worked. But as Jones highlights, such strands of scholarship have neglected to study the role of medical professionals as producers and consumers of instruments and pharmaceuticals, and the way this facet of their professional life can be understood by studying the medical trade catalogues. Further, Jones draws attention to the work of historians of technology and stresses the fact that the medical trade catalogue was itself a material innovation, a communication technology that can illuminate the everyday life of medical professionals.

Finally, the most intriguing methodological aspect of her book is the way Jones draws on the methodologies of book historians to study the material aspects of the medical trade catalogue. She acknowledges the influence of Robert Darnton's writings on the ‘communications circuit’ and on the history of reading. Darnton offers a holistic approach to understanding a book's life cycle and pays attention to the transactions between author and publisher and then the book's trajectory from the printer to the shipper, bookseller and reader as revealed in the archives of such stakeholders. He systematizes this knowledge by examining issues of intellectual influences and publicity, political and legal sanctions and how they are both interlinked with contemporary economic and social conjunctures. Jones uses Darnton's methodological framework to understand the trajectory of the medical catalogue as a material and historical artefact. In addition, she focuses on the medical practitioner as a producer and consumer of medical tools and surgical instruments who would also publicize and endorse these as crucial for the progress of medicine in the pages of medical trade catalogues. As Darnton has noted, the value of studies in book history is that they show that books make history, and Jones's study The Medical Trade Catalogue in Britain, 1870–1914 focuses on the interlocking flow of texts describing and recommending drugs and medical instruments, and of contexts of reading the trade catalogues. Hence Jones devotes the first four chapters of her book to studying the contexts of production of the catalogues, while the remaining two focus on the reception of the catalogues and on the medical professionals who actively engaged with them as readers and contributors.

A noteworthy aspect of the medical trade catalogue was its direct or indirect support of social causes, and in particular the Malthusian League and its campaign for the availability of contraception and for the education of the public about its use. As Jones notes, the majority of doctors were against the use and promotion of contraception and so the publishers of medical trade catalogues included details about them in special catalogues that promoted medical sundries, rubber goods or domestic and surgical specialities. To advertise contraceptives, they added writings of neo-Malthusians such as Annie Besant, and they also relied on the testimonials of members of the public. In this way, Jones offers a valuable source to those researching the history of the birth control movement in Britain.

The book features in the Science and Culture in the Nineteenth Century series published by Pickering & Chatto Publishers and constitutes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the medical profession, its communication practices and its print culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and beyond.