Brian Burfield

As is to be expected from the subject matter, this is not an easy read, but is most illuminating about the medical provision for soldiers in the centuries before the introduction of gunpowder. The author's focus is on the procedures described in the historical record, so we do not learn much about the benefits of the herbs and other ingredients selected for the various treatments, subsequently discovered by modern science. The significant roles played by women in military medicine, and by surgeons, doctors and knowledge from the Islamic world were revelations to me, as were some remarkable surgery and bone-setting.… (meer)

This is a meticulously sourced and annotated history that contains almost no discussion of actual treatments because it seems so many of them are so sketchily referenced in primary sources. Or at least they are sketchily referenced by the author. Apparently, the medical manuals of the era tend to refer to “as the leeches know” or “in the way that the leeches do it” a lot of the time, so actual techniques are barely discussed, which is a shame. It’s sort of what I came for. But if you have an oral, hands-on tradition, it makes sense that little makes the page.

In addition to availing himself of the known medical manuals, leechbooks and herbals of the period Burfield makes use of Viking sagas, medieval romances, miracle accounts and other secondary sources where wounds and treatments are discussed. It’s clear that in many cases, especially in the miracle tales, that it was actually effective doctoring that saved a person’s life, not a visit to a saintly shrine. And his inclusion of mental illnesses caused by war is a nice touch. These more poetic accounts provide a lot of nuance on that.

It’s a nice round-up of the types of injuries and s fighting men most feared in the era, but if you came looking for detailed discussion of the work of a medieval Leech or surgeon or herbalist, or even a modern medical analysis of what the techniques might have been, you’re going to be greatly disappointed. (For example, there’s a long discussion of St. Anthony’s fire, caused by Ergot poisoning, but no discussion of how it actually effects the body and how it works, just the list of medieval symptoms and how people suffered with it. There’s no comparison of treatment techniques of the period and which might have helped. I was hoping for that sort of a discussion and this book doesn’t have it.)

It seems primarily useful for its truly extensive bibliography and would be a terrific place to start for your own research on this subject.… (meer)