The theme of this book is the growth of the European tradition of medical theory, from the early Middle Ages until its collapse in the seventeenth century. Central to this tradition were ancient texts and the respect accorded to the ancients themselves by the moderns, the teachers and practitioners of medicine of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The chapters examine how the ancient texts formed a resource for later medical men and how as a consequence they were sought out, translated and used. Three matters receive particular attention: the classroom culture by which the teachers perpetuated...

Many Early Modern Europeans who during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries travelled to the New World left written or pictorial records of their encounters with a surprising fauna. The story told in this book is woven out of the threads of those texts and pictures. A New World of Animals shows how the initial wonder at the new beasts gave way to a more utilitarian approach, assessing their economic and medical potential. It elucidates how shifts in European perceptions brought the animals from the realm of the fantastic into the mainstream of early modern natural history, while at the...

British Medicine in an Age of Reform, charts the nature and dynamics of the radical changes which occurred between 1780 and 1850 - a great turning point in British medicine. Medicine was reformed just as politics was being reformed. It became a recognizable profession, and at the same time there was an impetus from within to base the subject upon science. By the end of the 1850's medicine had become perceptibly modern'.
Contributions by acknowledged experts cover subjects from Apothecaries' Act of 1815 to froensic medicine, and the effect of scientific medicine on the...