Medicine in a Multicultural Society

Luis Garcia-Ballester, formerly University of Cantabria, Spain

• Contents: Preface; Foreword, Jon Arrizabalaga, Monserrat Cabré and Fernando Salmón; Christians in a Multicultural Society: Medical science in 13th-century Castile: problems and prospects; Nature and science in 13th-century Castile. The origins of a tradition: the Franciscan and Dominican Studia at Santiago de Compostela (1222-1230); Medical licensing and learning in 14th-century Valencia; Jews in a Christian Society: Jewish appreciation of 14th-century scholastic medicine; Changes in the Regimina sanitatis: the role of the Jewish physicians; Dietetic and pharmacological therapy: a dilemma among 14th-century Jewish practitioners in the Montpellier area; The Threefold Incomprehension: A marginal learned medical world: Jewish, Muslim and Christian medical practitioners, and the use of Arabic medical sources in late medieval Spain; Academicism versus empiricism in practical medicine in 16th-century Spain with regard to Morisco practitioners; The Inquisition and minority medical practitioners in Counter-Reformation Spain: Judaizing and Morisco practitioners, 1560-1610; Index.

’...(has) set the seal on a long and fruitful career devoted to the History of Medicine which only a scholar of the first rank could have accomplished...This fascinating collection is essential reading for those interested in the medieval medicine in the Iberian Peninsula, and the work pays fitting tribute to a lifetime of research.’ Suhayl 'One can only applaud the sensitivity with which are analysed the different claims of Jews, Muslims, and Christians (and various combinations of conversos) to possess medical knowledge... Both volumes together show how much has been achieved in the study of medieval medicine during the last thirty years, to which both scholars contributed greatly.' Medical History '... taken together [these essays] offer a synthetic history, a general interpretation of the social and cultural factors that shaped the course of medicine in Spain over four centuries. No one else has had the insight to assemble such varied materials from the different traditions, much less been able to integrate their stories.' Social History of Medicine '... exceptional... an excellent model of a historiographical approach...' History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences