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Podcast: New Books in Medicine
Episode: J. C. McKeown, “A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the Healing Arts of Greece and Rome” (Oxford UP, 2017)
Description: The back cover of J. C. McKeown‘s new book, A Cabinet of Ancient Medical Curiosities (Oxford University Press, 2017), is adorned not with review quotes from contemporary scholars, but rather the discordant voices of the medical writers he excerpts. Speaking of Galen, Photius of Constantinople notes that the author tends to overload his writings with irrelevancies and digressions. Aristotle offers a characteristic caution, urging no one can become a doctor by reading books. These statements intimate the overall style and aims of this entertaining book: to approach the culture of antiquity through medical practice and belief. Though McKeown deliberately go...