The science of man in ancient Greece

dilemma with potentially fatal consequences if the wrong choice were made. Both volumes together show how much has been achieved in the study of medieval medicine during the last thirty years, to which both scholars contributed greatly. It is no longer enough to edit or present a text, as if its meaning required little further elucidation or as if its significance as an index of medical progress (or the reverse) could be easily determined. The ideas themselves are framed and discussed within a particular intellectual context by doctors trained in a long tradition of philosophical and logic enquiry. This is true not only of Italy and Paris, but also of Spain, the riches of whose archives and libraries are now visible at last. Above all, there is a renewed emphasis on the individual medical practitioner, less as a heroic figure than as one faced with the realities of patients and their illnesses. The range of skills required to work intensively with medieval or renaissance texts is considerable, as both authors show, yet the rewards in reconstructing the medical ideas and practices of so distant a period are no less great.