The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Commonwealth Fund Publications) [Paperback]

Guido Majno (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674383311 | ISBN-13: 978-0674383319 | Publication Date: September 1, 1991

This journey to the beginnings of the physician's art brings to life the civilizations of the ancient world--Egypt of the Pharaohs, Greece at the time of Hippocrates, Rome under the Caesars, the India of Ashoka, and China as Mencius knew it. Probing the documents and artifacts of the ancient world with a scientist's mind and a detective's eye, Guido Majno pieces together the difficulties people faced in the effort to survive their injuries, as well as the odd, chilling, or inspiring ways in which they rose to the challenge. In asking whether the early healers might have benefited their patients, or only hastened their trip to the grave, Dr. Majno uncovered surprising answers by testing ancient prescriptions in a modern laboratory.

Illustrated with hundreds of photographs, many in full color, and climaxing ten years of work, The Healing Hand is a spectacular recreation of man's attempts to conquer pain and disease.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a work of feeling and passion...What Guido Majno has created after a decade of effort is a work of scholarship of the highest order, which reads with the facility of an adventure story that, in a way, it is. (Human Behavior )

The author is a courageous and catholic amateur of history who delights in inference, an experimenter, a questioner and a cultivated writer of imagination, humor and compassion...His work is above all a delectable lesson in how to know the past. (Scientific American )

I found Majno's work so absorbing that I was hardly able to put it down...This is a book for the serious reader as well as the browser...A splendid book. (Natural History )

This beautifully illustrated, thoroughly referenced book certainly deserves recognition as an outstanding contribution to the history of medicine. Hopefully, physicians and historians will take advantage of its enjoyable wisdom. (Journal of the American Medical Association )

What vitality--a great laughing, learned, extroverted giant, dragging you with him on one of the most stimulating and entertaining journeys for a long while... This is just a great, astonishing book.
--Charles Newman (British Medical Journal )

The book provides a broad panorama of disease and healing from prehistoric times to the era of Galen, told with wisdom, grace, wit and new insights. Its author approaches the history of illness and its therapy with a joy and enthusiasm that are infectious...So--hurry, buy, read and enjoy!
--Louis Lasagna, M.D (New England Journal of Medicine )

Reading The Healing Hand is like going through a museum with a seasoned guide who not only points out the sights but relates innumerable anecdotes along the way.
--Catherine Macek (Journal of the American Medical Association )

About the Author

Guido Majno was Chairman of the Department of Pathology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester.

Product Details

• Paperback: 600 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674383311
• ISBN-13: 978-0674383319
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 6.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #201,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > History > Ancient > China

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars medicine and its development in several cultures, January 22, 2000

By 

Yoon Ha Lee - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Commonwealth Fund Publications) (Paperback)

I ran across this in a high school library. A high school library, for crying out loud--and I don't believe anyone else had ever checked it out.

It made wonderful Christmas reading. I suppose most people don't read about medical history over Christmas. I did. I couldn't put it down.

Ancient Greece, China, India...I can't remember the rest. (That copy is still *in* the high school library...though temptation beckoned.) Majno covered medical practice (or malpractice from a modern perspective...) in loving detail. I wish my medical background were better, but I believe this book is honestly written and as accurate as it could be. Some of the research was eye-opening even to my poor ignorant eyes.

Medicine isn't everyone's favourite leisure reading...but if it is yours, take a look.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant survey of early surgery, August 13, 2001

By 

Kenneth Hodges (Norman, Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Commonwealth Fund Publications) (Paperback)

Majno's book is not only magnificently informative but great fun. His prose is a positive pleasure, his research and knowledge are immense, and he has the gift of combining several perspectives to explain why procedures that now seem appalling made sense to the physicians of the period. He has experimentally tested a number of ancient remedies, and he is refreshingly willing to assume intelligence and craft among early physicians, even when they seem to be doing precisely the wrong things. His discussions of how we learn what medical techniques might have been is fascinating in its own right. Of his major sections (Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Indian, and Roman), the Egyptian is probably best and the Chinese weakest.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very accessible to the lay reader, October 22, 2000

By 

Gaylin Walli - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World (Commonwealth Fund Publications) (Paperback)

Most books on the history of medicine read rather like either horror novels or dusty tomes, with few authors finding that rare balance between entertainment at the price of detail or dullness for the sake of completeness. Guido Majno's work THE HEALING HAND manages to entertain the lay reader without bogging down in too much medical terminology. THE HEALING HAND intrigues without succumbing to that all-to-tempting penchant many medical history writers have of detailing the most absolutely vile and disgusting medical practices in the world while sacrificing attention to the ones that modern readers will recognize and possibly even relate to.

The driving force of Majno's work, one that comes through plainly in his writing, is that he really wants you understand what it is he's talking about. By examining available historical texts, piecing together data from archaelological digs, and even experimenting his theories on himself, Majno take you on a "journey" through medical wound healing history, starting with ancient Egypt and the Pharoahs and moving on through Hippocrates's ancient Greece, Ceaser's ancient Rome, ancient India, and ancient China. Few authors could manage the detailed tapestry of cultures and medical information Majno deftly weaves. He treats the subject of ancient would healing as few other writers do and, in the process, exposes you to how his mind works by writing how he thinks the minds of healers worked concerning wounds during the aforementioned time periods.

It's that spark of looking into his mind that makes his writing intriguing to me. It's rather like getting an easily understandable peek into the mind of a genius hard at work on an earth-shattering discovery. Combine the easily accessible text with the understandable pictures and graphics, complete and unobtrusive footnotes, and the wonderfully extensive bibliography and you have an invaluable addition to your library.

As a lay researcher in a medieval re-enactment society, I found this work a true gem, well worth the price of adding to my collection. Even though it would only be considered a "secondary source," the details were too rich and the clarity of the information too valuable to think twice about its purchase. Majno gave me the "why" behind so many medical practices I'm rather saddened that I didn't find this book sooner. Despite being written originally in 1975, I've read and reread it many times using it as a springboard for further research and experementation.