The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800.

The authors of this excellent volume, all of them leading historians of medicine and members of the Academic Unit of the prestigious London Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, present an accurate survey of the western medical tradition from classical antiquity to the nineteenth century. During this period a whole system of medical concepts that dated back to the Greeks permeated the medical culture of Europe, playing a leading role in the understanding of health and disease and in therapeutic treatments. The goal of this volume is to place the description of medical theories, the therapeutic strategies, and the diseases themselves in a social and cultural context. Thanks to this historical perspective we have an image of the wide and complex world of healing in our pre-modem past, more precise and detailed than that resulting from the kind of history made through the presentation of major figures and main achievements in medicine.

The volume comprehends an introduction and eight chapters with chronological tables. Vivian Nutton is the author of the general introduction and of chapters 1, 2, 3, and 5, which discuss medicine in the Greek world (800-50 B.C.), the Roman world (250 B.C.-A.D. 200), late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and medieval western Europe (1000-1500). The first chapter deals with the social and epidemiological background, the religious and rational aspects mixed up in Greek medicine, the relationship with philosophy, the achievements of Hippocrates and of the Hippocratic Corpus, and of Hellenistic medicine and the medical sects. The second chapter gives an accurate account of the first contacts of the Roman world with Greek medicine, the rise of Methodism and the contribution of Asclepiades. After discussing medical practice and medical assistance, Nutton finally presents the figure of Galen of Pergamum, who was to have a very deep and lasting influence on the systematization of western medicine. The third chapter deals with the relationships between Christianity and medicine, charity and early hospitals, and then the formation and spread of Galenism. Nutton's fifth chapter treats the medical school of Salemo and the impact of Greek and Arab medical text translations, the rise of university medicine and the professional pyramid, which included the learned physicians but also surgeons, apothecaries, and unlearned healers. Nutton in addition dedicates his attention to some medieval diseases, to medieval concepts about the body, and also to women's problems and women's healers.

Lawrence I. Conrad portrays the Arab-Islamic medical tradition from early Islamic medical discussions to the revival of humoral medicine, the wide activity of translation, and the dissemination of medical learning through Islamic society and its practitioners and hospitals.

Andrew Wear is the author of chapter 6, which covers medicine in early modern Europe from 1500 to 1700. With great competence he discusses disease and society, the organization of learned medicine, anatomy and the achievements of Andreas Vesalins, the relationships of medicine with surgery and botany, the rise of Paracelsianism and finally the discovery of circulation of blood by William Harvey and the impact of the new science.

Roy Porter's own contribution to the volume concerns medicine in the eighteenth century. After a good outline tracing the legacy of the scientific revolution, he discusses various aspects of scientific medicine from anatomy to physiology, before presenting the clinical medicine and disease theory of the time and considering therapeutics and surgery; attention is also paid to popular medicine, quackery, and to the relations between medicine and the state.

The general conclusion, devoted mostly to the relationships between disease and the environment and also to problems of medical history, is written by Michael Neve and is followed in turn by a thorough bibliography and indexes.

DANIELA MUGNAI CARRARA Florence