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The reviewer wishes to call attention to Riesman's valuable work. The person of average knowledge of medical history has some appreciation of that of Greece and Rome but is ignorant of the events in the field of medicine to the beginning of modern science. The space between is an unknown territory, and the assumption is common that it has no importance in the history of medicine. As a matter of fact, medicine was fermenting through most of the period, and medieval medicine forms a connecting thread with modern medicine. There has been no book available in English that gives a survey of this period, although interest in it has become common and there have been many papers on the subject. Riesman has filled this gap in the literature and in this work has given a delightful account of medical activities in the middle ages. His scholarship and philosophy show