This volume brings together cutting edge research by historians from Britain, Germany, France, the US, Japan and New Zealand. Innovative in its approach to innovation, it focuses on diffusion and resistance, and organization as well as technology. The collection features issues such as control and compliance, professional power and economic constraint, cultural divides, 'configured users' and ingenuity. The introductory essay relates the collection to history and sociology of innovation and technology, asking 'what is distinctive about medicine and health?' Explorations of recent cases, along with deeper probing of the past century, call into question how the past relates to the future. Health policy makers and analysts, practitioners, users and historians will find the editor's claims for the uses of history provocative. With its emphasis on clarity of writing, its mix of empirical details and analysis, and its rich bibliography, this volume offers rewards to academic and health service readers alike.

Jennifer Stanton works with the History Group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has published on the history of medical technologies, infectious disease research and policy, and African child health.

Introduction, Jennifer Stanton; Part 1 Close neighbours; Chapter 1, Debbie Nicholson; Chapter 2 Organization, ethnicity and the British National Health Service, Helen Valier, Roberta Bivins; Part 2 Across nations; Chapter 3 The Western mode of nursing evangelized?, Aya Takahashi; Chapter 4 Acupuncture and innovation, Roberta Bivins; Chapter 5 Degrees of control: the spread of operative fracture treatment with metal implants, Thomas Schlich; Part 3 Re-innovation and the state; Chapter 6 Representing medicine, Kelly Loughlin; Chapter 7 The diffusion of two renal dialysis modalities in the UK, 1960s-1980s, Jennifer Stanton; Chapter 8 Midwifery re-innovation in New Zealand, Philippa Mein Smith; Chapter 9 French response to 'innovation', Martine Gabolde, Anne Marie Moulin;