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Anna Akasoy, Charles Burnett, and Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, eds. Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West. Micrologus' Library 25. Florence: Sismel Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008. xii + 277 pp. Ill. euro46.00 (978-88-8450-300-8).
As every Europeanist knows, astrology used to be good science. It used to be essential to both medical theory and practice. It used to be part of every person's Weltanschauung. The big message of the book under review here is that the foregoing is true not only of Europe-and I speak as a historian of its Middle Ages-but of many other places on the planet as well.
This collection of essays, which come (with one exception) from a colloquium held at the Warburg Institute in 2005, "gives [us]," as the editors put it, "a first glance at the contacts between astrology and medicine, and opens up the subject to future research" (p. xi). The ground covered is extensive-the ancient Near East and Egypt, classical...