Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is a wonderful resource for gaining knowledge and insight into ancient medicine. Guido Majno not only explains what these ancient cultures did, but in many instances he explains why. He discusses their practices against the foundatioins of their whole culture, including their cultural knowledge base, their religions, their laws, and their technology. He give a great deal of background. For example, when he discusses the medicine of the egyptions, he goes through a basic primer on heroglyphics and then shows the symbols used by the ancient egyptions. This book gives you a real understanding of what these ancient healers struggled with and why they chose certain practices over others. Because of Majno's modern investigation and testing of these practices you also gain an understanding of what they did that worked and what didn't work. I recommend it to anyone who has an interest in medical history.

I first encountered this book in the mid-1990s while living overseas in a review of recommended non-fiction and fiction called, "The Common Reader." I don't know if this review continues today, but the author of the review of The Healing Hand so completely sold me on this book that I ordered a copy and had it shipped to me overseas. I found the book fascinating and authoritative. The reader comes away with not only an expert assessment of wound treatment from paleolithic times to the near present, but also with fodder for odd conversational interjections such as, "Do you know what the treatment for a sucking chest wound was during the period of the Illiad?" Over the intervening years, I've purchased copies for friends--friends either with or without an interest in the treatment of wounds for whatever reason--just because this is one of the most fascinating books I've ever read, and one worth sharing with your intellectual affines.

Excellent historical work regarding wound healing. If one can obtain the original edition of 1975 in good condition, I find it preferable to the reprint of 1992 in that it is paperback rather than hard cover, slightly smaller than the original and the quality of the photos and such were not reproduced all that well in the re-print.

This book is a true opus magnus. The author spent years learnng to read ancient hieroglyphics so he could directly translate ancient medical texts. He shows a picture of a dinosaur fossil with osteomyelitis for goodness sakes! It's worth buying the book just for that! The scope and breadth of the material covered from so many ancient cultures is just incredible. Very educational and an excellent read besides.

Is an amazing book.
The autor is a very solid writer, with a experience in pathology and history.

thank you.

"The Healing Hand" is a generous and detailed history of ancient medicine. Majno, a practising physician and extraordinarily erudite amateur historian, has assembled a detailed account of what is known (and, perhaps, more importantly, what is NOT known) about the medical practises of prehistoric humanity, Egypt, India, China, Arabia, Greece and the Roman world. Those starry-eyed believers in 'the wisdom of the ancients' should read it and reflect on the bizarre, dangerous and just plain lunatic approaches to disease, wounds and healing practised with confidence in so many cultures. Blood-letting was only the start of medical and surgical techniques which must have almost always slowed the recovery of the patient. But Majno frequently goes further - and experiments (with laboratory animals) to see if some of the herbal 'remedies' had, in fact, any beneficial value. Generally they don't.
His range of learning is impressive - to understand Egyptian papyri, for example, he appears to have mastered most of Gardiner's 'Egyptian Grammar' (the standard text book on learning hieroglyphics if you are Really Serious about learning them) as well as considering what other modern authorities have deduced from the ancient prescriptions. And the net result? The Egyptians knew little of medical value and used that little knowledge to little effect.
Although the book is more than 20 years old, I have not seen any work which surpasses this one in depth, interst, wit and illustration. As a retired museum curator of medicine, I recommend it wholeheartedly.