Book Review: Laura M. Zucconi, Ancient Medicine. From Mesopotamia to Rome, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019

In her foreword to Laura M. Zucconi's lengthy publication on ancient medicine, Candida Moss, Cadbury Professor of Theology in School of Philosophy, Theology, and Religion of the University of Birmingham (UK), indicates how important the author's work is as it brings together a number of research fields, often examined in silos or “balkanized” (p. xv) areas of expertise. According to Moss, Zucconi's transdisciplinary approach is what is most exceptional in this publication; a “complicated web of geographical, social, and historical boundaries” (p. xvi). At the start, besides the foreword, there is a section on abbreviations and acknowledgments. At the end, a detailed bibliography and three handy indexes (authors, subjects, scriptures and other ancient texts) complete Zucconi's superb work on ancient medicine. As both historians and medical practitioners will probably constitute the majority of this publication's readers, the introduction explains some general health-related concepts, such as health, disease, illness, healers and patients, as well as a historical overview of the contexts—time and place—discussed.