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Résumé L'article retrace les transformations de l'élite médico-universitaire en Angleterre, à partir du cas de Manchester et de sa faculté de médecine, de la révolution industrielle jusqu'à la désindustrialisation. Il analyse les raisons qui font que l'influence des facultés de médecine connut son apogée dans les premiers temps du National Health Service, avant de décliner, à partir des années 1980 sous l'effet de l'essor du general management et des orientations « néolibérales » du gouvernement central, qui s'avérèrent bien plus prégnantes que celles qui prévalaient durant les décennies précédentes, prétendument « étatistes ».

This is a personal account of scholarship in the history of medicine in Britain, from the 1960s onwards, drawn from recollections and knowledge of the literature. The institutional development of the subject is reviewed, emphasizing the contributions of the Wellcome Trust; the various modes of historical research and writing are surveyed and assessed. Modest suggestions are made for renewing the historiography of medical sciences and technologies-to contribute to the politics of knowledge and to wider histories.

Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain