From ancient Egyptian reliefs showing surgical instruments to illustrations of the four humours in medieval manuscripts, and from Renaissance anatomical drawings to the exotic contraptions of early 20th century quacks, this volume draws on the art and craftsmanship that has been applied to the healing sciences to tell the story of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and quackery. The book is arranged by medical speciality and covers Eastern as well as Western medical practice.

Galen of Pergamum, court physician to the family of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, was the most influential figure in western medicine until the 20th century. In the first biography of Galen in English, Mattern examines his prodigious corpus of philosophical and medical treatises to paint a portrait of a shameless self-publicist who could be arrogant and fiercely competitive but was also relentless in his pursuit of cures and an advocate of rigorous observation and experimentation.

Born in Devon, Thomas Glass (1709-1786) trained in Leyden and moved to Exeter in 1740, then devoted the rest of his life to his work as a physician and to the people of Exeter. This biography provides a portrait of Glass as one of the pioneering doctors of his day.

Although first published over 50 years ago, Richardson's 'broad outline of the evolution of modern surgery' remains an absorbing account of great surgeons and surgical breakthroughs, written for both professional and general readers. The book covers all the major types of surgery and ranges in date from the discovery of anaesthesia to the first heart transplants, on the verge of modern practice. This new edition includes a great deal of new material, and a much expanded bibliography. Slightly off-mint.

Based on an electronic corpus of some two million medical texts from c.1500-1700, this volume of 12 essays provides a new perspective on the evolution of the special language of medicine. From the Studies in English Language series.