Medicine in the Crusades
Warfare, Wounds and the Medieval Surgeon

Presents a detailed description of medieval medical treatments available during the Crusades.

Piers D. Mitchell (Author)

9780521036603, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 May 2007

304 pages, 10 b/w illus. 1 map 4 tables
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.2 cm, 0.455 kg

'Dr Mitchell is not only a medical man, but is also one who has taken the trouble to get to know the archaeologists in Israel. He has had, therefore, an entrée to excavations and to already excavated sites. He has written the fullest treatment so far of aspects of medicine and surgery in relation to the crusades and the Latin settlements in the Levant …This is an important book, because it opens up a new field of research and does so in an authoritative manner.' Crusades

This is the first book to be published on any aspect of medicine in the crusades. It will be of interest not only to scholars of the crusades specifically, but also to scholars of medieval Europe, the Byzantine world and the Islamic world. Focusing on injuries and their surgical treatment, Piers D. Mitchell considers medical practitioners, hospitals on battlefields and in towns, torture and mutilation, emergency and planned surgical procedures, bloodletting, analgesia and anesthesia. He provides an assessment of the exchange of medical knowledge that took place between East and West in the crusades, and of the medical negligence legislation for which the kingdom of Jerusalem was famous. The book presents a radical reassessment of many outdated misconceptions concerning medicine in the crusades and the Frankish states of the Latin East.

List of illustrations
List of tables
Preface
Introduction
1. Medical practitioners in the Frankish states
2. Hospitals on the battlefield and in the towns
3. Archaeological evidence for trauma and surgery in the medieval period
4. Torture and mutilation
5. Injuries and their treatment
6. The practice of elective surgery and bloodletting
7. Exchange of medical knowledge with the crusades
8. Frankish medical legislation
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of medicine [MBX], Archaeology [HD], European history [HBJD]