In a pair of articles published in 2002 and 2003, Andrew Cunningham proposed a difference between the discipline of physiology as understood in modern terms and the conception of it prior to the nineteenth century. Cunningham's thesis is the acknowledged basis for much of Blood, Sweat and Tears, a collection of essays divided into five parts and devoted to exploring physiology from antiquity through to the early nineteenth century – a subject which, as Helen King notes in her introduction, has received far less historical attention than anatomy.

The essays in the book cover much ground. Traditional historical accounts are supplemented by perspectives from literature, art history and philosophy. Part One (‘History of physiology in context’) is by far the largest section, and, along with King's introduction, it establishes one of the major themes of the book, the role of analogy. The body as an analogy for meteorological phenomena is described in a thoughtful essay by Liba Taub, who explains analogy as described by Aristotle and Epicurus before considering meteorological examples in their work and in Lucretius. The body as understood by analogy with other natural systems is dealt with in a number of essays, including the analogy between ageing and a fading flame (Daniel Schäfer), the body as a battlefield (Sabine Kalff), and an intriguing essay by Sergius Kodera on early modern physiology as interpreted in terms of the distillation of spirits.

Part One also reinforces the idea of continuity and discontinuity in the meaning of the term ‘physiology’. The first essay of the book, by Vivian Nutton, clarifies that physiology was not limited to medical subjects in Greek thinking but rather indicated the study of nature as a whole. Nutton goes on to examine the role of physiology in Galen's medicine before clarifying how the use of the term in the sixteenth century by Jean Fernel and others differed substantially from our modern notions. Rina Knoeff's essay on Herman Boerhaave describes the Dutch physician's method of reconciling Hippocratic physiology with eighteenth-century medical theories, providing a useful extension of Nutton's discussion and complementing Elizabeth Craik's description of the reception of the Hippocratic treatise On Glands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Fabio Tutrone also discusses Lucretius in Part One, connecting De rerum natura with early modern physiological thinking, while Tomas Macsotay looks at the role of vitalist medicine in Diderot, and Tamás Demeter comments on the way David Hume's understanding of the mind was informed more by Scottish philosophical chemistry and vitalistic physiology than by Newtonian mechanical philosophy.

Part Two, which is devoted to blood, is the second-largest section. Its essays include a survey of clotting and the four humours from antiquity to the nineteenth century by Hans Haak, the philosophical underpinnings of Ibn al-Nafis's thirteenth-century theory of lesser circulation by Rainer Brömer, medieval notions of sperm and blood in embryology by Karine van’t Land, Jacomien Prins on the music of the pulse in Ficino's work on Plato's Timaeus, medieval visual approaches to the biblical tradition of Haemorrhoissa (Barbara Baert, Liesbet Kusters and Emma Sidgwick), blood as the source of life in religion and medicine in the sixteenth century (Catrien Santing), and another essay with analogy as a theme, a discussion by Barbara Orland on the analogy between blood and milk in early modern medicine and experimental physiology.

Orland suggests that it was the work of Harvey and Aselli that ushered in experimental physiology, and an essay in Part One, by Michael McVaugh, also identifies Harvey with a changing perception of physiology. McVaugh's discussion of the gradual disappearance of Galen's notion of attraction in the kidney shows that knowledge of the kidney's structure, beginning with Mondino in the fourteenth century and continuing into the seventeenth, affected perceptions of Galen's theory, which was ultimately eliminated after Harvey introduced circulation.

Part Three, on sweat and skin, has three essays. The first is a treatment of skin in Homeric poems by Valeria Gavrylenko. It is followed by an interesting discussion of sweat in both learned literature and popular perception from 1500 to 1800 by Michael Stolberg. Mieneke te Hennepe looks at theories of a porous skin from the late sixteenth century to the early eighteenth, especially noting the role of microscopic evidence.

Part Four covers tears and sight in three essays. The first is devoted to Galen's physiology of sight (Véronique Boudin-Millot), and is followed by vision and the camera obscura in Plempius’ Ophthalmographia (Katrien Vanagt), and the role of tears in Johann Gottfried von Herder's physiology (Frank Stahnisch).

Part Five, ‘Body and soul’, concludes the book with a piece by Julius Rocca on Galen's natural pneuma and its reception, in the ninth century, by Hunayn ibn Ishāq. Bernardino Telesio's physiology in the work of Oliva Sabuco is described by Marlem Bidwell-Steiner, and Marion Wells discusses maternal vocality and melancholy in Webster's Duchess of Malfi, while Diana Stanciu describes the role of Aristotle's vegetative soul in Ralph Cudworth's conception of plastic nature.

Cunningham's influence is especially obvious in the prominence of analogy in this book, which seems to come chiefly from his assertion that early modern physiology was not itself experimental but rather involved reasoning based on anatomical experiment. Although readers interested in the extensive experiments with the body that occurred in the seventeenth century may be disappointed by the resulting lack of material devoted to that subject, analogy proves to be a fruitful approach in a number of essays and also allows for wide forays into philosophical, literary and artistic thinking. Blood, Sweat and Tears should therefore appeal to a broad audience, ranging beyond the traditional confines of historians of medicine.