Maimonides's On the Regimen of Health (Ar. Fī tadbīr al-ṣiḥḥa; Heb. Hanhagat ha-Beri'ut), is a consilium “composed at an unknown date at the request of al-Malik al-Afḍal Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī, Saladin's eldest son who complained of constipation, indigestion, and depression” (p. 3), advising the prince how best to preserve his personal health and well-being. This is one of Maimonides's most famous medical works, possible even the best-known to laypersons. Since much of the text of the Regimen provides general guidance on how to live a healthy life, paying attention all the six ‘non-naturals’ of Hippocratic medicine (light and air, food and drink, work and rest, sleep and wakefulness, excretion and retention, and affections of the soul), it is useful for other people, too, and not only for al-Malik al-Afḍal. The Regimen was translated several times in the medieval and modern eras, clearly influencing learned Jewish writings on medicine and health up to the eighteenth century at least, it retains great popularity among traditional Jews well into the twenty-first century, with new printed versions of the original text, or re-workings claiming that the newest fads are based on it, appearing every year. To this day, in Jerusalem's Mahaneh Yehudah market there is a stall that proudly proclaims itself to be selling health drinks and remedies based on Hanhagat ha-Beri'ut. With this in mind, it is problematic that the editions and translations available hitherto have been based on defective manuscripts. A critical edition of the original Arabic text has been a major desideratum, and it is wonderful that it has been met.

This book is Volume 12 of The Medical Works of Moses Maimonides, a series of parallel Arabic-English editions, formerly published by the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham Young University and now under Brill's imprint. We have come to expect very high standards of scholarship and production from this series, since its first appearance in 2004, and I am happy to say that this volume meets them. Gerrit Bos is to be commended for the past fifteen years of service to the academic community at large as chief editor and translator.

The current book comprises an introduction; an edition and translation of the Arabic text; editions of the extant medieval Hebrew translations (one of which is newly discovered by Bos) and a supplement comparing the Arabic text with its medieval Hebrew and modern English and German translations; and editions of the medieval Latin translations, prepared with an introduction by Michael McVaugh. The volume concludes with a glossary, bibliography and four indices of various medieval translations and a fifth one, covering materia medica and technical terms throughout. As can be seen just from this listing, this is a treasury of information and knowledge, that I expect will be of great value for research and teaching alike.

In the introduction, after a brief biography and listing of Maimonides's medical works, Bos offers a very full overview of the reception of the Regimen in its Hebrew and modern translations, explaining the need for a new critical edition. Thereafter, the Arabic and Hebrew versions are largely treated as a single unit. Followed by a thorough listing of the extant Arabic manuscripts used for the edition, Bos explains his choice to use Arabic rather than Hebrew script (so-called ‘Judaeo-Arabic’), apparently following Y. Tzvi Langermann's view that many of Maimonides's medical writings were first composed in Arabic characters and then transcribed into Hebrew (p. 11). I may add that as in Maimonides's time, so also today, publishing in Arabic script makes his work available to a wider public. Next, Bos discusses the three medieval Hebrew translations in great detail—the extant manuscripts used (or not) for the editions, the relationships among the translations, and their relationship to the Arabic text. After a succinct review of the regimen sanitatis as a genre and of Maimonides's sources, the introduction ends with a summary outline of the contents of the book.

The edition and translation itself is exemplary. Spot checks confirmed that the translation is correct and fluent, while the extensive footnotes enrich the scholar's experience, while not distracting the student. I believe that this edition will be of great use for teaching at different levels on a variety of topics, among them the history of medicine, the transmission of knowledge among different religious and cultural groups, and even translation studies.

As an inveterate lover of desserts, I was very pleased to read that “the consumption of a few sweets after the meal is good” (p. 68), while as a historian of pharmacy, I particularly enjoyed the detailed recipes for remedies for constipation that Maimonides provides for al-Malik al-Afḍal at the beginning of Chapter 3. Many of the ingredients would have been quite readily available and similar recipes (although not identical ones) can be found in prescriptions preserved in the Cairo Genizah.

The penultimate section of the volume is contributed by Michael McVaugh, who has collaborated with Bos on previous volumes in this series. While the Latin tradition is beyond my expertise, it is worth pointing out the comprehensive introduction McVaugh provides for his edition of the extant translations. Similarly to Bos's introduction to the Arabic and Hebrew versions, McVaugh provides, together with a detailed listing of the extant manuscripts, a thorough discussion of the relationships among the Latin and Hebrew translations, and the Arabic original. While naturally somewhat technical, this is an excellent example of the cross-linguistic and cross-cultural transmission of medical knowledge, and the use of a fascinating example of the changes in the names of dough-based foodstuffs (pp. 236-237) makes this section accessible, I believe, even to non-Latinists (perhaps even to undergraduates?).

This is a book that should be in every university library.