“The Healing Practices of the Knights Templar and Hospitaller by Jon G. Hughes is a well-researched and fascinating look into the healing practices and related medicines of the early Crusaders. What makes this book all the more intriguing is the author’s personal journey of discovery, tracing the footsteps of the Crusaders across southern Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean as they made their way to the Holy Land and, hopefully, back again. Jon G. Hughes’s rediscovery of the many medicinal plants and spiritual healings is a journey of enlightenment. It’s also a story of East meets West, in that the warrior-monks adopted many of the Eastern healing practices and carried them back to western Europe. In many cases this knowledge and understanding is still in use some eight hundred years later. I have been waiting for a book of this nature for a very long time.”