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Jennifer Clarke Kosak, Heroic measures: Hippocratic medicine in the making of Euripidean tragedy, Studies in Ancient Medicine vol. 30, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2004, pp. x, 229, euro90.00, US$121.00 (hardback 90-04-13993-1).
This monograph begins with the contention that medical themes are "more integrated into the work of Euripides than scholars have hitherto noticed" and states the aim to "foreground" some of the "shared cultural assumptions in ... the medical and tragic genres" (pp. 11, 14); it is concluded that these writings "reveal... two sides of the same coin" (p. 197). Eight plays are discussed in some detail: seven of Euripides (Hippolytus, Ion, Medea, Orestes, Heracles, Phoenissae and Bacchae) and one of Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound). The arrangement is in two parts, the first entitled 'Healers and the heroics of medical technê' and the second 'From cause to cure'; in each part an exposition of Hippocratic ideas is followed by a play by play analysis, tracing the presentation of the same or similar concepts....