The anthropology of medicine. From culture to method

records of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is that they enable us to study not the learned culture but the beliefs and views of the common people. Were it not for the fact that so many were hauled before the Inquisitorial courts, we would have had very little evidence about them at all. In this particular case, these sources are of inestimable value because they constitute almost the only source of information on Moriscan medical practices to which we have access at present. Garcia Ballester, with the assistance of Rosa Blasco, was able to piece together the facts from scattered testimonials and reports to produce a comprehensive-and riveting-picture of both prescriptive and popular Moriscan medicine. It covers the field, dealing with the training of doctors and healers, their connexions with traditional Moslem medicine, the way in which medical knowledge was preserved and passed on from generation to generation, and the complex system of relations which obtained between Moriscan medicine and Christian society. A third section of the book comprises a selection of sources from the records of the Inquisitorial courts and provides us, as it were, with the historical realities of Moriscan medicine. In his introduction to this section of the book, the author stresses the fact that it was not his intention merely to attach a documentary appendix to the first two parts of the book. Rather, he hoped to bring the reader face to face with the reality of the Moriscan medical sub-culture while at the same time illustrating the process of scientific disintegration which set in in the wake of the confrontations between "Old Christians" and "New Christians". The pressures exerted by the former on the Moriscos pushed them into the margins of society, and Moriscan medicine, thus excluded from the mainstream of scientific inquiry, came to depend more and more on praxis and less and less on theory. While these documents provide the reader with great insights into the history of Moriscan medicine, it would appear that such total dependence upon Inquisitorial sources leaves something to be desired. True, there are very few medical documents written in Aljamiado, the Spanish language transliterated into Arabic and commonly used by the Moriscos, and even fewer in Andalusian Arabic. Nonetheless, every effort should be made to publish whatever material of this sort is available and to try to uncover more. This would prove, after all, the more authoritative source for an understanding of Moriscan medical concepts. Still, Garcia Ballester's work is exceptional and is a must for anyone interested in the history of sixteenth-century medicine. It goes without saying that it is an important contribution to Moriscan historiography, not the least because of the author's skill as a writer and his interdisciplinary approach, in which sociology and anthropology are given their due within the general framework of historical research.