The sheer extent of crossover - medics as religious men, religious men as medics, medical language at the service of preaching and moral-theological language deployed in medical writings - is the driving force behind these studies. The book reflects the extraordinary advances which 'pure' history of medicine has made in the last twenty years: there is medicine at the levels of midwife and village practitioner, the sweep of the learned Greek and Latin tradition of over a millennium; there is control of midwifery by the priest, therapy through liturgy, medicine as an expression of religious life for heretics, medicine invading theologians' discussion of earthly paradise; and so on. Professor Peter Biller is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of York; Dr Joseph Ziegler teaches in the Department of History at the University of Haifa. The contributors include: Joseph Ziegler, Peregrine Horden, Kathryn Taglia, Jessalyn Bird, Peter Biller, Danielle Jacquart, Michael Mcvaugh, Maaike Van Der Lugt, William Courtenay, and Vivian Nutton.