The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register

Most new books become rapidly outdated. It is indeed refreshing to welcome a new work of tremendous scholarship that will immediately assume a definitive position in the learned world, and will maintain that position for a long time to come. What was medicine like in the Middle Ages? Professors Talbot and Hammond, who began to investigate the problem independently but later joined forces, have published a scholarly and at the same time fascinating answer. Their answer takes the form not of a narrative but of a biographical dictionary. They have compiled all the known medical practitioners in medieval Britain, covering the period from Bede to the early 16th century, arranged them alphabetically, and have presented all the relevant biographical and social data. To find their biographical material they combed the primary sources in British history— both printed and manuscript material, including charters, rolls, chancery and exchequer records, household accounts, monastic