José María Borrás Llop (ed.), El trabajo infantil en España (1700-1950) (Barcelona: Publicacions i Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, 2014), pp. 511, €25, paperback, ISBN: 978-84-475-3797-6; ISBN: 978-84-9888-550-7.Peter Kirby, Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780-1850 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2013), pp. 224, £17.99, paperback, ISBN: 978-18-438-3884-5.

as those on deschi da parto (Italian trays given as birth gifts), or in frescoes of the birth of the Virgin Mary or of John the Baptist. One wonders whether late medieval artists knew of similar ancient Roman scenes, like those included by Berg in nicely presented black and white images. Or is it possible that medieval basins just continued to play crucial yet often overlooked roles in the human life cycle? This essay is a particularly good example of how further cross-chronological comparisons could have been even more illuminating. The last essay of particular note in a rich collection is that of Hautala on the changing nature of medicinal drugs such as mithridatium between Ancient Greece and the sixteenth century. The interdisciplinary approach (the author is both an anthropologist and a classicist) argues that drugs and all ingredients contained within them are highly unstable substances with complex cultural histories and competing forms of expertise and authority over their use. Drugs are just as much cultural artefacts as texts. All in all, this is a really interesting interdisciplinary volume. It will provide historians and archaeologists with interests in health and disability with much to think about for some time to come. Hopefully it will open up new avenues of comparative research across traditional chronological boundaries.