Wounds in the Middle Ages

Abstract

160 BOOK REVIEWS dependent upon governmental support, and a fee-for-service system of remunerating doctors. Both these elements have seriously constrained the capacity of government to control costs and to meet the principal objectives of Medicare, equity and universality. The questions raised by the authors concern not whether the country can afford to offer a universal and equitable national health service, but rather what is needed, in the existing policy environment, to provide such a system of care. What emerges very clearly from this history is that a reform of Medicare requires strong political interest in and commitment to health policy and the capacity to present such policy to the general public. The politicisation by both sides of politics of certain elements of Medicare, bulk billing for example, has seen these elements elevated to the status of untouchable verities. This puts significant constraints on any objective assessment of their meaning and purpose at this particular time. Making Medicare is highly recommended. It is a valuable resource for academic researchers, but most usefully it is an accessible and readable resource for the people who engage in making and implementing policy. Those who comment on health policy in the media could also find this book useful background for understanding the issues that are currently being debated. CECILY HUNTER UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Ann Kirkham and Cordelia Warr, eds. Wounds in the Middle Ages (Ashgate: Surrey and Burlington, 2014). ISBN: 978-1-4094-6569-0 (HB). 11 B&W illustrations, xv + 270pp. Conferences and symposia can often be the platform from which new research is launched and then tested on a wider audience through an edited collection from its best and brightest contributors. Wounds in the Middle Ages, compiled byAnn Kirkham and Cordelia Warr, is just such a collection. It is the result of a symposium of the same name with the goal of exploring the ‘study of wounds in medieval medicine within a wider cultural context’ (p. xv). It draws together research on wounds within the medieval world from a variety of different contexts, from medical practice, romance literature to religion and, in some cases, the cross over between these perspectives. Health & History ● 16/2 ● 2014 161 The edited collection is divided into six parts, each with a different emphasis and with varying success. Part I and Part VI consist of single chapters; the former on the management of military wounds, and the latter on the modern conception of dismemberment during the medieval period. Part I, although more descriptive in nature, acts as the foundation chapter for the collection, by explaining how wounds were understood and were treated. Without this knowledge, the concept of miraculous healing or the treatment of wounds in chivalric literature does not make much sense. Part VI exemplifies one of the reasons we study the past, that is, to debunk our preconceived ideas about that past. ‘[T]he sense that detaching a finger or a hand had the potential to be positive or even desirable is likely to feel sharply foreign to readers today. For many medieval people, on the other hand, it seems to have been much less strange, especially, but not only, as an imagined ideal’ (p. 232). Several chapters—namely chapters one, four, and eight—prove that medieval theories and practices in wound management were not too dissimilar from current medical practice. Part II, on miraculous wounds and miraculous healing, and Part V, on the practice of wound surgery in the fourteenth century, are both thematically tight. Part II is convincing in its argument that the health of the soul and body are intimately connected, and chapter 3 in particular challenges the current view that medicine and religion were in conflict with each other. Part V addresses the practicalities of wound treatment, both in its level of innovation and patient care. Chapter 9 is also accompanied by several contemporary rich medieval illustrations, as is chapter 10. Parts III and IV are somewhat disjointed thematically, and unfortunately expose the challenge for editors to find and make meaningful links between chapters. For example, chapters 4 and 5 make up Part III and address, respectively, wounds as ruptures to the continuous flow of the humours, and the adaptation of medical...