Description
Book SynopsisMajno pieces together the difficulties people faced in the effort to survive injury, as well as the odd, chilling, or inspiring ways in which they rose to the challenge. In asking whether early healers benefited their patients or only hastened their demise, Majno uncovered surprising answers by testing ancient prescriptions in a modern lab.
Trade ReviewWhat vitality—a great laughing, learned, extroverted giant, dragging you with him on one of the most stimulating and entertaining journeys for a long while… This is just a great, astonishing book. -- Charles Newman * British Medical Journal *
This beautifully illustrated, thoroughly referenced book certainly deserves recognition as an outstanding contribution to the history of medicine. Hopefully, physicians and historians will take advantage of its enjoyable wisdom. * Journal of the American Medical Association *
The book provides a broad panorama of disease and healing from prehistoric times to the era of Galen, told with wisdom, grace, wit and new insights. Its author approaches the history of illness and its therapy with a joy and enthusiasm that are infectious…So—hurry, buy, read and enjoy! -- Louis Lasagna, M.D * New England Journal of Medicine *
Reading
The Healing Hand is like going through a museum with a seasoned guide who not only points out the sights but relates innumerable anecdotes along the way. -- Catherine Macek * Journal of the American Medical Association *
This is a work of feeling and passion…What Guido Majno has created after a decade of effort is a work of scholarship of the highest order, which reads with the facility of an adventure story that, in a way, it is. * Human Behavior *
I found Majno's work so absorbing that I was hardly able to put it down…This is a book for the serious reader as well as the browser…A splendid book. * Natural History *
The author is a courageous and catholic amateur of history who delights in inference, an experimenter, a questioner and a cultivated writer of imagination, humor and compassion…His work is above all a delectable lesson in how to know the past. * Scientific American *
