[MR] Medieval Medicine book review

[Garth G. Groff]

Noble friends,

Just cataloged for the UVA library: BODIES OF KNOWLEDGE: CULTURAL 
INTERPRETATIONS OF ILLNESS AND MEDICINE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE, edited by 
Sally Crawford and Christina Lee (ISBN 9781407307145; our call # FINE 
ARTS R141 .B63 2010). This is a very specialized branch of knowledge, 
yet with disease and mental illness so rampant in medieval Europe, it is 
a subject well worth studying. The editors of this volume have selected 
six essays, some of them rather surprising: Rage Possession: A Cognative 
Science Approach to Early English Demon Possession; Outlawry and Moral 
Pervision in Old Norse Society; Hermaphroditism in the Western Middle 
Ages:Physicians, Lawyers and the Intersexed Person; The Nadir of Western 
Medicine? Texts, Contexts and Practice in Anglo-Saxon England; 'This 
Should Not Be Shown to a Gentile': Medico-Magical Texts in Medieval 
Franco-German Jewish Rabbinic Manuscripts; Asclepius, Biographical 
Dictionaries, and the Transmission of Science in the Medieval Muslim 
World. The texts are clearly written, and while rather scholarly, are 
not beyond comprehension to those lay persons interested in any of the 
topics. Sadly, there are no illustrations, though each essay has a large 
bibliography. For anyone interested in medieval medicine, or in any of 
the specific cultures named, this book would make good background reading.

Kind regards,


Lord Mungo Napier, Shire of Isenfir's Unofficial Librarian
(mka Garth Groff, UVA libraries cataloger)