Democracy and DNA: American Dreams and Medical Progress

Weismann, Director of the Division of Rheumatology at New York University-Bellevue Hospital, succeeds in writing an entertaining chronicle of both medical knowledge and artistic advances in the Victorian era. "The meliorist dream" which he refers to in his introduction was a concept coined by George Eliot that roughly characterizes the period's intellectual belief that the world's problems might be diagnosed and solved. Weisman skillfully blends this concept of social progress with its correlate manifestations in the medical field, literature, and politics. However, he does not sacrifice one world for another, e.g. his analysis of Emily Dickinson's literary and medical conditions are equally adept. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.