Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- List of Tables -- Abbreviations -- Introduction -- Pt. 1. Individual and Environment -- 1. Food and Famine 3 -- 2. Individual and Environment 22 -- 3. Pregnancy and Childrearing 40 -- Pt. 2. Mentalities and Healthcare -- 4. Sickness in the Community 57 -- 5. Doctors, Hospitals and Cures 79 -- 6. Recording the Dead 108 -- Pt. 3. Medical Achievement: Southern Italy in Context -- 7. Patterns of Knowledge: Texts and the School of Salerno 127 -- Conclusions: Integrating the Southern Italian Evidence 137 -- App. I. A miracle of St Trophimena provides a cure for Theodonanda 148 -- App. II. Ursus the doctor on Tancred's illegitimate birth 152 -- App. III. Chronology of major early medieval disasters in Italy (after Corradi) 153 -- App. IV. A survey of minimum ages at Gaeta 155 -- App. V. Extant medical manuscripts from southern Italy 158 -- Map 163 -- Plates 165 -- Bibliography 173 -- Index 181.

Medical historians are already familiar with medieval southern Italy through research into its famed medical school at Salerno. This volume takes a broader view of healthcare, seeking to illuminate the experience of sickness, attitudes towards the ill and infirm and the provision of care up to the twelfth century. Combining information from hagiography and chronicles with less well-known charters and archaeology, it deals with the provision of food, the environment, women's health, individual and collective disease and varieties of cure. A final chapter assesses the interaction between intellectual and practical medicine, as well as re-examining the early life of the medical school at Salerno. The book's importance lies in its wide-ranging approach and detailed analysis, which will appeal to historians of medicine and medieval culture alike.

Description based on print version record.