Medicine and Space

This volume contributes to medical history in Antiquity and the Middle Ages by significantly widening our understandings of health and treatment through the theme of space . The fundamental question about how space was conceived by different groups of people in these periods has been used to demonstrate the multi-variant understandings of the body and its functions, illness and treatment, and the surrounding natural and built environments in relation to health. The subject is approached from a variety of source materials: medical, philosophical and religious literature, archaeological remains and artistic reproductions. By taking a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject the volume offers new interpretations and methodologies to medical history in the periods in question. Contributors are Helen King, Michael McVaugh, Maithe Hulskamp, Glenda McDonald, Roberto Lo Presti, Fabiola van Dam, Catrien Santing, Ralph Rosen, and Irina Metzler.

Review:

...this volume reveals (if only in snapshots) the hidden dimensions of the body and the deeper structures that inform cultural discourses on illness and healing [...] This volume is of great value to those interested in the pre-modern body, from its interior spaces to the natural and man-made environments with which it was in constant communication. [...] Medicine and Space: Body, Surroundings, and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages is a meaningful contribution to the history of medicine and the body, and will be useful to students and researchers alike. Brenda S. Gardenour Walter, Medieval Encounters 19 (2013), pp. 238-242 ...De artikelen en prachtige afbeeldingen in Medicine and space sluiten naadloos op deze inzichten aan. [...] Vooral de inleiding van Patricia Baker en Han Nijdam biedt een zeer helder overzicht van deze verschillende invalshoeken. [...] Medicine and space biedt nu alvast een waardevolle ingang tot allerlei vragen naar het lichaam, ruimte en omgeving... Claire Weeda, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 126 (2013), pp. 410-411