Medicine and Healing in the Ancient Mediterranean World contains two sets of proceedings, one of a conference of the same name, and the second one of the first symposium of the Cyprus Ancient Population Project, on ‘New Approaches to Archaeological Human Remains in Cyprus’, incorporated into the former. The order of the forty-two contributions follows the original programme (although a few appear to have been dropped or added), with the papers coming under the nine session headings, and those of the archaeology symposium inserted between Parts VII and VIII. The division into sessions may have been expedient at the time of the conference, but for the publication it would have made sense to abandon it. Part I (‘Medicine and Archaeology’), the paper on peak sanctuaries from Part II, Part VII (‘Skeletal Remains’) and the Symposium papers have enough in common to be combined into one larger section on medicine-related archaeology and palaeopathology — or even into an internally coherent separate publication. In the volume as it stands, there is no unifying theme beyond the words of the title (not even those for the last three titles, which are neither ancient nor Mediterranean). Most of the papers are in English, six in Greek and two in French, but all with English abstracts. Generally speaking they are quite short, some of them extremely so, and their quality is uneven to say the least. (To be fair, the editor makes it clear in the preface that he wanted to attract established scholars as well as researchers in the early stages of their careers. Perhaps some of the latter should have been given more help.)

The contributions in Part I should be of interest to many readers, dealing as they do with some fairly unusual material. Not many will be familiar with the finds from Aiani and Upper Macedonia — votive stelai, sculptures, stelai showing body parts — introduced by G. Karamitrou-Menesidi and K. Moschakis. ‘Ancient Greek votives, vases and stelae depicting medical diseases’ by S. Geroulanos features some striking images of what appear to be lesions or diseases, but Geroulanos may be overly ready to see the pathological everywhere. Certainly the claim — unsubstantiated by any references — that mastectomy was performed in the fifth century b.c.e. should raise some eyebrows. The editor, D. Michaelides, does the reader a service by introducing some rarely seen artefacts from Hellenistic and Roman Cyprus in his paper on anatomical ex-votos. Here again, though, there is great willingness to define objects as medical, when a cultic background is equally likely, as with the extraordinary noseless face with swollen lips, and when ‘pathological’ details may be the result of poor craftsmanship or damage. C. Morris and A. Peatfield's thorough contribution on finds from the more than twenty-five peak sanctuaries on Crete shows a much more cautious approach in explaining the many votives, figurines and anatomical models (some of them dating back to 2200 b.c.e.). Also based on archaeological material, R. Arnott's evaluation of Linear B tablets for mentions of doctors (i-ja-te) or medicinal plants provides some new insights into Mycenaean civilization.

While one can understand the heading ‘The Aegean’ for those last two papers, it is difficult to see what puts T. Sukhishvili's ‘Medical knowledge on the evidence of the Iliad’ into that category. S.'s investigation of ‘somatic terms’ disregards all earlier literature on medicine in Homer as though the subject had never been written about, and despite citing the Patroclus/Eurypylus episode, ignores the mention of surgery. (And what has happened to the Greek font in the table?)

The nine papers in the (longest) section on ‘medical authors and schools’ vary widely in quality. At the high end of the spectrum, one can enjoy P. J. van der Eijk's carefully argued analysis of the methodology and ideological presuppositions underlying W. H. S. Jones' (‘Malaria Jones’) theories on the rôle of malaria in the ancient Mediterranean world. Other contributions are far too short for saying anything meaningful on the large topics their authors have chosen — ancient medicine and philosophy, and genre intertextuality. A few others would make good introductions to editions of the works or authors they describe: Galen's De pulsibus and Ars medica, Vindicianus and Celsus (the last based mainly on Mudry). D. Lypourlis' suggestion that the Democedes story in Herodotus points to earlier Hippocratic ethical guidelines from which the Oath developed is original, but unconvincing. (Democedes, who first tries to avoid using his skills to treat the king and then practically blackmails the queen into helping him, is hardly a paragon of medical ethics.)

Part V, on surgery, opens promisingly with a rigorously researched, informative article by R. Jackson on the evidence — archaeological, scientific and textual — for different types of knives intended for specific surgical interventions, accompanied by his trademark beautiful drawings. The rest of Part V is less impressive. A. Musajo Somma's short paper on ‘Alexander's wounds as a paradigm for war surgery’ only touches on (some of) Alexander's wounds briefly, and then moves on to later military surgeons, leaving one to wonder what was the paradigm (or the point). ‘Surgery in Byzantium’, by S. Geroulanos et al., consisting mainly of lists of names of instruments and operations, as well as three passages from Paul of Aegina (in Adams' translation), might make a good handout for a lecture, but cannot really be called an article. The seven-author paper on ‘plastic surgery of the face in Byzantine times' (seven pages including copious illustrations) is a typical example of ‘history of medicine’ as presented in medical journals in its enthusiastic positivism. In this case the flat nose and unusual features of the ‘Carmagnola head’ (possibly an effigy of Justinian I, now in Venice) are interpreted as the possible result of facial reconstruction after the nose had been cut off (again, disregarding other explanations, such as damage or iconographic conventions).

Things improve considerably with the section on ‘Medicaments and Cures’, which contains some substantial, well-researched articles, for example, on compound medicines (A. Touwaide), on Lemnian earth and the rituals accompanying its extraction, both in antiquity and in early modern times (E. Photos-Jones and A. J. Hall), or the intriguing paper on the rôle of vision in shaping progeny in Greek and Jewish sources (O. Y. Margalit and C. Tziraki-Segal). The same is true of Part VIII, ‘Asclepios and Incubation’, with incubation in antiquity covered by J. Harrisson, I. Israelowich and G. Petridou. (The article on medical matters in canon law, though instructive, does not fit in there, nor does the one on the hostel of St Demetrios.) The papers in Part VII (‘Skeletal Remains’) and the Symposium proceedings, too, are based on careful research. These contributions are fairly technical, though, and will appeal mainly to archaeologists.

It is impossible to discuss all the papers, let alone give a comprehensive verdict on this idiosyncratic collection, where, however, most readers should find something of interest to them. This review is intended to illustrate the wide variety of topics as well as the disparate quality, ranging from highly scholarly to graduate student essay.

Smaller in bulk than the preceding collection, but higher in content, ‘Greek’ and ‘Roman’ in Latin Medical Texts unites twenty-one papers given at a colloquium on the theme ‘At the Crossroads of Greek and Roman Medicine’, one in a long-standing series of conferences on Latin medical texts. For the first time this involved a workshop for research students and young post-docs, so as to give junior scholars a chance to present their research. Also for the first time in the series, all the proceedings are published in English in order to broaden the audience. One may deplore the gradual erosion of languages other than English from the international conference circuit, but from a practical point of view this was no doubt a wise decision. The papers — by scholars from a wide range of disciplines within classical studies — fall into five thematic sections: ‘The Physician’, ‘Medical Practice and Theory’, ‘Anatomy and Pathology’, ‘Pharmacology and Magic’ and ‘Language and the Establishment of the Text’.

As with all multi-author volumes, there are stronger and weaker contributions. One highlight is V. Boudon-Millot's learned and entertaining ‘Greek and Roman patients under Galen's gaze’. She teases out the differences in Galen's attitude towards his patients in his native Asia (often rustics, and of course the gladiators at Pergamum) and those in Rome. Galen openly admits his reluctance to use certain more aggressive remedies, such as bird droppings, on his mainly upper-class Roman patients, and even confesses to being forced to provide ‘commotics’ such as face powder or hair-dyes.

Also in the ‘Physician’ section, S. Barbara investigates an overlooked subject: the strategies employed by court physicians of the Imperial period in order to perpetuate their memory, be it by benefactions or by producing literary works. The third paper is P. Bader's on the identity, legal status and geographical origin of medical staff in the Imperial Roman army. The baffling assertion that the topic has ‘hardly been studied’ (43) — although B. is citing at least Davies, Nutton and Wilmans — disowns a large body of secondary literature. In his otherwise useful lists of different kinds of ‘medical staff’, ala is translated as ‘wing’ and medicus alae as ‘wing doctor’ — one of several small oddities scattered throughout the book. These could be the result of translations by linguistically competent, but non-classicist translators.

The three contributions in Part 2 deal with traces of Pneumatism in Seneca's Naturales Quaestiones, the extent to which medical literature was known to non-medical Latin authors (whereas scholars had so far concentrated more on Greek sources), and the use of Greek and/or Latin in medical papyri respectively. There is an overlap in content between Parts 2 and 3, and in the latter B. Bakhouche looks at Calcidius' commentary on the Timaeus (of which she published an edition in 2011). It portrays Greek theories of vision and at the same time attacks the iuniores for misrepresenting them. The third paper (by A. Gautherie) in this section is about pain in Celsus and the rôle it plays in the patient-doctor relationship, but also as a first attempt to specify degrees and types of pain in Latin. This contribution, too, has been somewhat mauled in translation.

The ‘Pharmacology’ section opens with A. Pietrobelli's erudite effort at reconstructing the lost treatise on the plant euphorbion by King Juba of Mauretania from quotations in Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen. Of the other four papers, S. Hautala investigates pharmacological works written in verse and the practical function of this format in preserving and transmitting information, P. Gaillard-Seux looks for the origins of magical formulas in Pliny, and V. Bonet describes Pliny's use of his sources on the main narcotic plants. (The ‘grafting’ metaphor seems a little forced, since in his preface Pliny only speaks of using Greek sources and yet producing something new.) The final contribution combines archaeology with textual research: M. Pardon-Labonnelie compares the Greek names of eye remedies engraved on stone collyrium stamps from finds in Switzerland with names found in medical texts.

Unsurprisingly in a series of colloquia on Latin medical texts, the philological section is the longest, containing eight papers. Two of those, V. Ortoleva on the adjective apiosus and V. Gitton Ripoll on the Mulomedicina, are in fact about veterinary medicine. In the former, the translation ‘to pick it up’ for ‘a loco suo petere’ (263) cannot be correct, especially since the object is a horse. S. Buzzi and F. Messina turn their attention to the Latin and Greek traditions for the Corpus Oribasianum, an unusual case insofar as the Latin translations predate the surviving Greek manuscripts and can therefore help with establishing the text.

Scribonius Largus is the subject of two contributions, one considering two of his recipes cited by Galen (by A. Guardasole), and the other, by S. Sconocchia (editor of the 1983 Teubner edition of the Compositiones) about his ‘Greek-coloured’ Latin and his criticism of a group of doctors, whom Sconocchia identifies as the Methodists. M. E. Vázquez Buján and G. V. M. Haverling deal with the medieval tradition, while L. López Figueroa examines ways to use the probably early medieval Tereoperica (hitherto unknown to this reviewer), which is based on Cassius Felix, in producing a critical edition of the latter.

This is a substantial and scholarly collection, some of the papers dealing with lesser-known, not to say arcane, material. It is not a book for the general reader, but classicists in general and historians of ancient medicine should find much there to interest them and also something to learn.