Famine, disease and the social order in early modern society

said to be "popular" (they wrote learned Latin texts) and both ofwhom lived in the fourteenth century. Seemingly more relevant figures from the previous century, some with French associations, like Arnald of Villanova, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Gilbertus Anglicus, and Roger Bacon, are either given less space or omitted. Hunt footnotes books, dissertations, and articles by the hundred, but again his odd sense of proportion may disturb some readers (as will the lack of a bibliography or detailed index). Works by major historians like Michael McVaugh, Vivian Nutton, and Nancy Siraisi are badly neglected. On a related front, while materia medica during the period after Hunt's texts were written is a can of worms the editor opens himself, his coverage of the topic is eccentric. In his list of edited recipes in Middle English, for instance, the editor inexplicably includes Huling Ussery's biographical survey of fourteenth-century learned physicians but omits the two largest collections of recipe and antidotary material yet edited in the field: English translations of Guy de Chauliac's Grand surgery and Gilbertus Anglicus' Compendium of medicine. And, given the editor's stated wish that scientists use his material to further a quest for "Green Pharmacy", one wishes that he had provided translations of his most interesting recipes for them to employ. Modern plant identifications are helpful, but unless the way in which materia medica was used is understood, whatever secrets writers like Hunt hope to reveal will remain hidden. In short, Hunt's book deserves praise for the efforts he has expended to make thirteenthcentury medical texts better known. His analysis of medieval medicine and pharmacy, however, leaves something to be desired. A more tightly-focused study of the important texts the book prints, in attempting less, might have achieved more.