Medieval Medical Miniatures – Peter Murray Jones

$70.00

Medieval Medical Miniatures by Peter Murray Jones – a colour-illustrated history of medicine and surgery as shown in medieval manuscripts.

About the book

Drawing on illuminated manuscripts, largely from the British Library, Peter Murray Jones shows how medieval physicians, surgeons, apothecaries and midwives worked – diagnosis by urine, bloodletting, surgery, herbs and the care of the sick – through dozens of beautiful miniatures reproduced in colour with expert commentary.

The illustrations cover the whole of medieval medical practice: the doctor at the bedside, uroscopy, astrological medicine and the 'zodiac man', herbal remedies and the apothecary's shop, surgery for wounds and fractures, childbirth, and the care of the sick in hospitals and monasteries. The accompanying text explains what each image shows and what it tells us about medieval ideas of the body and health.

Both an accessible introduction to the history of medicine and a beautiful picture book of manuscript art.

About the author

Peter Murray Jones is a historian of medieval medicine and Fellow and Librarian of King's College, Cambridge.

Ideal for: historians of medicine, lovers of illuminated manuscripts, and readers interested in medieval life and herbalism.

Details

  • Author: Peter Murray Jones
  • Publisher: The British Library

Carefully packed and shipped from Australia. Questions about this copy, or want more photos? Get in touch.

Medieval Medical Miniatures by Peter Murray Jones – a colour-illustrated history of medicine and surgery as shown in medieval manuscripts.

About the book

Drawing on illuminated manuscripts, largely from the British Library, Peter Murray Jones shows how medieval physicians, surgeons, apothecaries and midwives worked – diagnosis by urine, bloodletting, surgery, herbs and the care of the sick – through dozens of beautiful miniatures reproduced in colour with expert commentary.

The illustrations cover the whole of medieval medical practice: the doctor at the bedside, uroscopy, astrological medicine and the 'zodiac man', herbal remedies and the apothecary's shop, surgery for wounds and fractures, childbirth, and the care of the sick in hospitals and monasteries. The accompanying text explains what each image shows and what it tells us about medieval ideas of the body and health.

Both an accessible introduction to the history of medicine and a beautiful picture book of manuscript art.

About the author

Peter Murray Jones is a historian of medieval medicine and Fellow and Librarian of King's College, Cambridge.

Ideal for: historians of medicine, lovers of illuminated manuscripts, and readers interested in medieval life and herbalism.

Details

  • Author: Peter Murray Jones
  • Publisher: The British Library

Carefully packed and shipped from Australia. Questions about this copy, or want more photos? Get in touch.

Medieval Medical Miniatures

Some of the manuscripts illustrated are famous because of the quality of their design and splendor of illumination. But most medical illustration was not work of such refinement and, consequently, has been ignored by historians of art. For the historian of medicine, however, these ordinary manuscripts are as revealing and enlightening as the select few, because they tell so well what the study and practice of the healing arts must have been like in medieval times and provide evidence of the changing role of the book in the history of medicine.

The eleven color and sixty black-and-white llustrations vividly enable the reader to see the extraordinary range and diversity of the miniatures in subject matter and styles. Jones considers each picture as an integral part of the manuscript in which it is found and interprets it as document of medical history. An informative and revealing addition to the literature of art and its place in medicine, Medieval Medical Miniatures gracefully combines sumptuous illustrations with enlightening text in a book of interest to physicians, art and medical historians, and medievalists alike.