Medical knowledge and practice changed profoundly during the medieval period. In this collection of over 100 primary sources, many translated for the first time, Faith Wallis reveals the dynamic world of medicine in the Middle Ages that has been largely unavailable to students and scholars. The reader includes 21 illustrations and a glossary of medical terms.

In recent decades various versions of Chinese medicine have begun to be widely practised in Western countries, and the academic study of the subject is now well established. However, there are still few scholarly monographs that describe the history of Chinese medicine and there are none at all on the medieval period. This collection represents the kind of international collaboration of research teams, centres and individuals that is required to begin to study the source materials adequately. The first book in English to discuss this fascinating material in the century since the Dunhuang library was discovered, the text provides a unique and fascinating interpretation of Chinese medical history.

Drawing on the wealth of medical illustration to be found in medieval manuscripts, Peter Murray Jones traces the history of medieval medicine, the artistic traditions which shaped its depiction and the changing attitudes and beliefs of both medical and artistic practitioners. This beautifully produced book is a revised, colour-illustrated version of the long out-of-print Medieval Medical Miniatures first published by The British Library in 1984.Some of the manuscripts illustrated are famous because of the quality of their design and splendour of illumination, but most medical illustration was not work of such refinement and consequently has been largely ignored by historians of art. For the historian of medicine, however, these ordinary manuscripts are just as interesting as the select few because they tell so much of what it must have been like to study and practise the healing arts in medieval times, as well as providing evidence of the changing role of the book in medicine.The colour reproductions presented here reveal the extraordinary range and diversity in subject-matter and style of these illustrations. Peter Murray Jones provides the context, considering each picture as an integral part of the manuscript in which it is found, and interpreting it as a document of medical history.