Hippocrates' woman: reading the female body in ancient Greece

generally workmanlike, the translation of technical terms, and the presentation of classical names in particular, is rather less satisfactory, and the text thus contains a number of errors and infelicities which could easily have been avoided. These points aside, this publication still has a lot to offer Anglophone readers. The original enterprise, as its editor, Mirko Grmek, explained in his introduction, was intended as a large-scale synthesis: a collective effort to produce a series of pieces that would, between them, cover the entire course of medical thought in the ancient and medieval West in a historically integrated fashion. The generation, transmission, adaptation, and assimilation of medical knowledge over the period were all to be related to the various other cultural, social, economic, environmental and biological factors with which they are bound up. Inevitably, some aspects of this synthesis receive more attention than others, but a combination of considerable breadth of approach with sufficient unity of purpose is maintained across all the chapters, so that the book provides an overview of the subject which is both coherent and complex. Moreover, Grmek mustered an impressive list of contributors, mostly leading scholars from continental Europe, making many of the essays authoritative summaries in their own right. Coverage is initially chronological-or at least mainly so, as chapters on Classical, Hellenistic, and Roman medicine (by Jacques Jouanna, Mario Vegetti, and Danielle Gourevitch respectively), are followed by pieces on the 'Byzantine and Arab world' (Gotthard Strohmaier), 'Charity and aid in medieval Christian civilization' (Jole Agrimi and Chiara Crisciani), and 'Medical scholasticism' (Danielle Jacquart)-and then more clearly thematic-with chapters on the concept of disease (Grmek again), drugs (Alain Touwaide), surgery (Michael McVaugh), regimen (Pedro Gil Sotres), and the ancient and medieval European "pathocenosis" (Jean-Noel Biraben). This last term refers to the community of pathological conditions which may be present in a given population at a given time, and it was introduced into the history of medicine by Grmek himself, which serves to emphasize that his influence extended far beyond the editorship of this volume, and the sense in which it can be said to articulate, at least in part, a shared scholarly view present prior to the actual inception of the publication project itself. This view, or approach, has its limits and biases the "West" of this book, for instance, is predominantly Mediterranean, rarely reaching more northerly climes-but it also has a number of strengths, in particular the breadth of its methodological vision, which suffuses the volume. Thus this translation makes more readily accessible to an English-speaking audience, a summary of current (mostly) continental European scholarship on the history of medical thought in the ancient and medieval West; a summary of impressive scope and a distinctive flavour. That is where its real value lies.