Addressing topics as diverse as influenza and insanity, Cultures of Care in Irish Medical History, 1750–1970 testifies to the growing popularity of the history of health and medicine, as well as to a burgeoning interest in medical humanities and in modern Ireland. Arising from a workshop at Warwick University in 2005, this volume, edited by Catherine Cox and Maria Luddy, joins Medicine, Disease, and the State in Ireland 1650–1940 (Greta Jones and Elizabeth Malcolm, 1999) as the key resources for the history of Irish medicine, disease, and health. In their introduction, Cox and Luddy state that they hope to illuminate “how religious, legal, and ‘traditional’ practices, as well as state policies, shaped” medicine and health in Ireland (4). In this, the collection succeeds even as it reminds us that more work remains to be done if we wish to understand the relationships among health, medicine, and modern Irish society and culture.

The book's introduction provides a basic overview of the field and situates Irish medical history in a larger European context. Here, the editors point out the current popularity of Irish medical history even as they outline the ways in which research on Ireland continues to lag behind that of other places, particularly Britain. Cox and Luddy specifically call for increased research in neglected areas such as mental health, children's medical experiences, gender and medicine, and occupational health (5).

The overall strengths of Cultures of Care include the diversity and caliber of its contributors and the methodologies and sources that each author calls on. Each chapter is meticulously researched and clearly written, with detailed notes. Indeed, one of the volume's key assets is its ability to serve as a guide for students and scholars to the myriad of sources available for the study of health in Ireland. In addition, by featuring mental health as one of their key themes, Cox and Luddy encourage us to expand our historical understandings of health, disease, and medicine. Here, they also urge us to think about the roles that state officials and medical professionals played in defining modern psychiatry and notions of insanity. The volume is also particularly strong in its ability to illuminate the clear connections among health and medicine, the legal system, and other state institutions (such as the workhouses).

Particularly noteworthy are chapters that analyze the intersections among health, medicine, and gender in the twentieth century. Two essays on infanticide, by Clíona Rattigan and Pauline Prior, discuss the gendered notions of insanity that pervaded the discourse on women who killed their infants even as they demonstrate the “vulnerability of poor women” who came into contact with medical and state professionals (169). Mary E. Daly's “Death and Disease in Independent Ireland, c. 1920–1970: A Research Agenda” effectively ends Cultures of Care by calling for more investigations of the connections between health and gender in the twentieth century. Here, Daly points to what she calls Irish women's comparatively “low level of female advantage” (246) in terms of life expectancy and mortality rates, urging us to explore how and why Irish women seem to have been disadvantaged in these ways during the twentieth century. Daly also calls on scholars to place their analyses of health within the larger context of “the power relations within the rural family and rural society” (256).

Solid overall, the volume nevertheless demonstrates some weaknesses. The title of the collection asserts that it covers the years 1750–1970, yet only chapter 1 discusses the eighteenth century. With one exception, in fact, the rest of the essays concentrate almost entirely on the postfamine era and/or the twentieth century. In addition, several of the essays, most notably James McGeachie's “Science, Politics and the Irish Literary Revival,” seem out of place in a volume that primarily features social history. Most significantly, perhaps, while the title of the collection references “cultures of care,” this volume only touches briefly on cultural history, privileging instead social, legal, and institutional factors. The addition of an essay or two on beliefs and attitudes toward health and disease, particularly in rural areas, would have been welcome. In her essay on the medical dispensary service in postfamine Ireland, Cox references the “heterodox medical practices” (58) that some rural Irish men and women called on in times of crisis, and in the introduction the editors recognize the “alternative beliefs and understandings about health and illness” that existed alongside official medical discourses (9). These comments open the door for an analysis of folklore and Irish medical history, yet none of the essays in the volume engages with this topic in any depth. As a result, this volume leaves the reader without a clear understanding of the popular cultural history of Irish health.

In sum, this collection is an important and timely contribution to the history of health and medicine in Ireland. It provides historians with a blueprint for research, outlining clearly the areas that still need work. It is appropriate for advanced undergraduates and graduate students, and hopefully, as the editors clearly intend, will encourage more specialized research in the field. A sweeping overview of the topic and an excellent introduction to sources and methodologies, Cultures of Care is a welcome, and long overdue, addition to the study of health, medicine, and illness in modern Ireland.