RICHARD C. DALES, The scientific achievement of the Middle Ages, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1973, 8vo, pp. ix, 182, illus., $12.50. Professor Dales has selected extracts from primary sources to illustrate early medieval scientific thought, from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries, and presents them with lengthy introductions in the form of an historical narrative. There are...

This book considers one of the less obvious (but arguably more important) passions – wonder – and the ways in which that emotion intersected with skepticism in the Middle Ages. Through an in-depth analysis of medieval responses to marvels, it thus builds upon earlier studies of wonder, most notably Caroline Walker Bynum’s seminal article on the topic, and a rich tradition of doubt scholarship.(...

DANIELLE JACQUART and CLAUDE THOMASSET, Sexuality andmedicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson, Oxford, Polity Press, 1988, 8vo, pp. vii, 242, illus., £27.50. To write adequately on the history of sexuality and medicine in the Middle Ages is far from easy. Many of the texts on which such a history can be based survive only in manuscript or in outdated editions, and a considerable know...

other writers driven by the agendas of cognitive neuroscience, is the meaning of reference to "psychology", "neurophilosophy", or "neuroscience" in the early modern period. In spite of the enormous attention to historical scholarship, books like this one have no intention of being side-tracked by the question whether the categories in terms of which we assemble knowledge are themselves historic...

The new surgical texts of the thirteenth century suggest that their authors wished their subject to appear as a learned discipline, yet it was still communicated by individual practitioners privately to one or two disciples, not in a university setting. But by 1300, surgery was beginning to be taught formally as part of medicine in many Italian studia, for example, by Dino del Garbo at Siena, t...

the same three categories. Bibliographies of manuscripts cited, edited original sources, and secondary literature complete the volume. The clinical material recorded in Abui al-'Ala' Zuhr's treatise is deplorably short of the type of detail we should like to have. Details of name, background, and occupation are never given, and only occasionally is age or general physical condition stated. The ...