Medicine as practiced in Babylonia, medieval Islamic lands, the Ottoman Empire, and British Mandate Palestine – and by the Jews living and functioning within those cultures – is the subject of the first half of this work, while the second half covers modern Israel and the circumstances that have shaped its medical expertise. Each article in the first half thus covers an almost impossibly broad time span yet gives some idea of the principles guiding each civilization’s approach to medicine. 

A brief chapter on military medicine surveys medical developments in primarily modern campaigns, from Napoleon and Allenby battling plague and malaria to Israeli triage. The medical emergencies Israel has faced in its short history, and the resources and innovations it has devoted to them, contrast sharply with the first half of the book – as if medical history suddenly entered a time warp, packing thousands of years of advances into less than the last century. 

Copious endnotes and liberal use of medical terms make Medicine no easy read for the layman – not surprisingly, as most of the contributors are doctors. But this volume does leave one profoundly grateful for today’s medical achievements in light of the anatomical misconceptions and fatalism of the past. Perhaps a team of writers comprising fewer physicians might have been slightly more critical of Israel’s paternalistic medical system. Then again, this book focuses on the Holy Land’s medical achievements, not its current failings.