J. C. McKeown, A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome

J. C. McKeown , A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome , New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Pp. 288. £12.99. ISBN 978 0 1906 1043 2. Patricia Baker Social History of Medicine, Volume 31, Issue 1, 1 February 2018, Pages 177–178, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkx087 Published: 27 October 2017 Cite Permissions Share Privacy Badger has replaced this AddThis button. A comment found in the Bibliotheca, a work by the ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, Photius, about Galen’s volume on Medical Schools, is printed on the back slipcover of McKeown’s reference collection on Greco-Roman medicine. It states that Galen’s work ‘should certainly be read before all other medical texts … even though the author tends to overload his writings with irrelevancies and digressions’. My assessment of McKeown’s work corresponds with Photius’ former statement because the volume makes an excellent introduction to ancient medicine. It familiarises students and scholars to the subject through a selection of literary excerpts that demonstrate the seemingly strange and unusual beliefs about the body, health and medical treatments that were held at the time. Although the majority of selections presented in the volume are taken... Issue Section: Book Reviews © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Social History of Medicine.