Daniela Marrone, Linda Luxon and  Gaetano Thiene (eds), English Students of Medicine at the University of Padua during the Renaissance (Padua: Padova University Press, 2016), pp. 179, €40.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-226-46529-6.

ethics and the building of knowledge. Testing the agency of interest groups such as sport federation employees, players associations, and providers of medical service in defining concussion, the author charts the politics of how doctors establish authority over diagnosing and treating the ailment. According to him, cardiac screening of athletes juxtaposes the questions of medical surveillance and medical imperialism. For instance, the acceptability of optional screening as in youth football is doubtful since prognosis seems to be problematic and can be contested. The lack of a steadfast regimen, specifically the focus on young people who are at a lower risk of cardiac trouble than middleaged athletes, raises the concern that the rationale behind cardiac screening could be arbitrary. Both the chapters deliberate the extent to which sports medicine can be a social construction, probing the intersection of several competing agencies such as profit and pleasure that have collectively shaped modern sport. The book reiterates the importance of studying the contemporary practice of both professional sport and physical exercise through the lens of public health. It refers to a number of topics that could have been developed better. Sports medicine, and the image of athletic fitness, are integral to a number of economic activities; mainly the production of energy drinks and nutrient supplements. A study of the economic drive behind the development of sports medicine would have complicated the story of the marketing of health, particularly in relation to amateur bodybuilding. An assessment of sport psychology as an important element of player management could be an interesting mental health analogue to the analysis of physical health concerns. The author could also have engaged with the implications of medical insurance for elite sport as part of his evaluation of sponsors. The book succeeds in presenting the medicalisation of sport as placed at the intersection of specialised athlete training programmes and public health considerations. It situates the tensions of regulating health through sport and for sport rather well, and reminds us of the salience of fitness as a motor of change at a psychosocial level.