Book Notes

Much has transpired in scholarship on Roman medicine in the past twenty-five years: diligent and painstaking assessment of literary and archaeological evidence has demonstrated the links of ancient Near Eastern, Greek, and Hellenistic medicine with facets of Roman medicine. Now the modern scholar can easily appreciate why “Roman” medicine was a melding of numerous traditions, both Eastern and Western.

Cappai takes portions of this refurbished Roman medicine and writes a choppy, if presumably comprehensive, survey, documented with numerous citations to major texts and some recent scholarship. The book fails to acknowledge the remarkable panoply of international scholarship, however. Furthermore, the all-too-frequent typographical errors (names of scholars and their books and articles) suggest a less-than-assured command of the new Roman medicine—a “new” Roman medicine in large part dependent on freshly reedited editions of major texts. Anyone who desires a reasonably up-to-date synopsis of Roman medicine (although not in English) can do no better than Jacques André’s fine Etre médecin à Rome (1987, 1995), a book that does command the particulars of pharmacology from Pliny, Scribonius Largus, Nicander, Dioscorides, and Galen, and does so without a whiff of condescension.

Manfred Waserman and Samuel S. Kottek, eds. Health and Disease in the Holy Land: Studies in the History and Sociology of Medicine from Ancient Times to the Present. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996. xii + 489 pp. $109.95.

This book’s eighteen chapters chronologically survey health and disease in one small area of the world, from the Middle Paleolithic era (100,000 to 40,000 years before the present) to 1994. The chapter titles and contributors are as follows: Introduction, Manfred Waserman and Samuel S. Kottek; “Paleopathology in the Middle East,” Baruch Arensburg and Marcus S. Goldstein; “Hygiene and Health Care in the Bible,” Samuel S. Kottek; “Public Health in the Holy Land: Classical Influence and Its Legacy,” Stephen T. Newmyer; “Health and Healing in Medieval Muslim Palestine,” Felix Klein-Franke; “Disease to Death during the Crusades,” Bernard H. Ficarra; “Medicine in the Crusaders’ Kingdom of Jerusalem,” Eran Dolev; “Pilgrims, Crusades, and Plagues,” Stephen R. Ell; “Ottoman Palestine (1516–1800): Health, Disease, and Historical Sources,” Amy Singer; “Sir Moses Montefiore and Medical Philanthropy in the Holy Land,” Amalie M. Kass; “Hospitals and European Colonial Policies in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Norbert Schwake; “Henrietta Szold: American Progressivism, Zionism, and Modern Public Health,” Manfred Waserman; “British Public Health Policy in Palestine, 1918–1947,” Nira Reiss; “Kupat Holim and Jewish Health Services during the Mandate,” Shifra Schvarts; “The Hadassah Medical Organization: Critical Years, 1928–1951: Oral History Interviews with Dr. Eli Davis,” Manfred Waserman; “The Conquest of Malaria,” Manfred Waserman and Yehuda Neumark; “Judea-Samaria and Gaza: Twenty-five Years of Changing Health, 1967–1992,” Theodore H. Tulchinsky; and “Health and Disease in Israel, 1948–1994,” A. Michael Davies. A bibliography and index complete the volume.

Edwin Clarke and C. D. O’Malley. The Human Brain and Spinal Cord: A Historical Study Illustrated by Writings from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. 2d rev. ed. Norman Neurosciences Series, no. 2. San Francisco: Norman Publishing, 1996. xviii + 951 pp. Ill. $195.00. (Available from Norman Publishing, 720 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94102-2502; tel.: 415-781-6402; fax: 415-781-5507; e-mail: orders@jnorman.com.)

The Bulletin’s reviewer, A. Earl Walker, commended the 1968 edition of this book for its success in “thoroughly documenting the major landmarks in the evolution of the brain and spinal cord” (Bull. Hist. Med., 1970, 44: 90). In the preface to the second edition, Clarke (the sole surviving author) comments that changes to the new version have been few. None of the quoted passages, which make up some 80 percent of the book, have been eliminated; the bibliography has been expanded to accommodate material published since 1968; and the index has been improved. Most of the changes occur in the compilers’ commentaries (which represent about 20 percent of the volume). Rather than bringing this part of the...