Historian John Waller's working world is inhabited by fears of madness, tuberculosis and gout, where the hint of a family illness could make or break a marriage contract. His research into nineteenth-century ideas of heredity and disease, at the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, aims to "recapture the fears of a period at least as fixated on heredity as we are today". It is a history of struggling ideas, folklore and confusion. There are no heroes of medicine here, no great minds to shed light on the darkness.

But then, John Waller would not expect there to be any. Two years ago, "having a few months to spare" after submitting his PhD on Sir Francis Galton, he wrote a book called Fabulous Science, which challenges the conventional history of science as a heroic saga of men before their time battling against ignorant, envious or bigoted mediocrities. The book's genesis can be traced back to his second Master's degree, in the History of Science and Medicine, at Imperial College. There, his eyes were opened by revisionist histories of science - before, he freely admits to a naive enthusiasm for the 'greats'.

"Part of the reason I went into the history of science was that for years I had venerated Charles Darwin. And I assumed that anyone who opposed him was obscurantist or a jealous rival. I had also been taught the story of Pasteur, Lister and the germ revolution as a relay race - the baton passed from one genius to the next while everyone looked on in awe. So I was shocked to find that Lister's wards were notoriously filthy and that Pasteur sometimes massaged his figures. Initially I was quite resistant; it seemed cynical. But I was fascinated by the stories."

In particular, he was struck by the more complex truth of struggling egos and social conflict that lay behind one of the great battles in science, between Darwin's bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley, and Bishop Wilberforce. He was immediately on the look-out for similar examples. "I collected them for a year and, as soon as my thesis was finished, I decided to write the book."

Fabulous Science is aimed not at historians of science (to whom he knows there will be nothing startling or new) but at the general public and at young scientists still nurtured on the old heroic model. "The standard histories manhandle 'great scientists' into these romantic roles. Working scientists freely admit that research is messy and often relies on instinct and determination, sticking with an idea when the results don't look good. They know that it's much better to have people driven by their enthusiasms and beliefs - even if this sometimes leads them astray."

Dr Waller also believes it is far better to create a history of science that takes account of hundreds of people - to recognise the foot soldiers as well as the generals, as he puts it. His current research into notions of heredity and disease between 1770 and 1870 does precisely that. "Most of my research focuses on a period of stasis - and the individual recedes from view."

His studies reveal an unusual level of overlap between everyday ideas of heredity and those of well-educated physicians. "At this time, many common or dreaded illnesses - TB among them - were deemed to be hereditary. In the medical press there was a great deal of discussion about the dangers of those with constitutional disease marrying and reproducing. Most doctors condemned those who did so for behaving with selfish irresponsibility. Fears of hereditary taints figured largely in novels by Dickens, Collins and others. And examining suitors for evidence of family malady was probably a matter of course in many families."

"I'm interested in how doctors could have placed so much emphasis on heredity when their pedigree data was - at least by modern standards - woeful. My own belief is that they opted for the concept to rationalise and legitimate their inability to cure a range of chronic maladies."

And when, in the later years of the 1800s, scientists such as Francis Galton started to formulate their eugenic theories, to a large extent these recapitulated the traditional fears about 'genetic' health - projected onto the level of national or racial health.

Such issues will no doubt find their way into Dr Waller's next book, on hereditary disease and 'rational' reproduction, which is nearing completion. Then it is on to Australia, as he takes up a teaching post in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, and in the Centre for the Study of Health and Society, at the University of Melbourne.

See also

• Dr John Waller at the University of Melbourne: Research interests and book details

Further reading

Fabulous Science: Fact and fiction in the history of scientific discovery is published by Oxford University Press (£18.99 hardback).