Scan barcode
ameyawarde's review against another edition
4.0
A pretty quick read, going through anecdotes and information body part by body part. Worth the read if you're interested in the medieval ages. :)
ellxnmcgrxth's review against another edition
challenging
informative
4.0
Very informative,
I read this as an audible book
I read this as an audible book
thepamz's review against another edition
4.0
Está muy interesante la perspectiva medieval de la medicina. Dicho esto, hablan también mucho de arte, cosa que no esperaba y lo hacía a ratos algo aburrido. El objetivo, sin embargo, es pintar la era medieval como algo más que esa época cochina llena de enfermedades e ignorancia que todos tendemos a evocar cuando nos referimos a ella. Y creo que se cumplió, aunque la verdad si te causan ansiedad muchos de los "métodos científicos" de los que se hablan.
stevenyenzer's review against another edition
3.0
Hartnell's organizational principle of "bodies" gives him a lot of room for digression, but I didn't mind it.
musicalpopcorn's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
3.25
Moving from the head to the feet, this book tells the reader information about Medieval perceptions of the body.
This book was really cool and the concept was awesome, I just found my attention wandering at times. The parts I was able to force myself to pay attention to were great. I’m not sure if the problem was me or the writing style.
I really liked how the book literally just went from head to toe.
This book was really cool and the concept was awesome, I just found my attention wandering at times. The parts I was able to force myself to pay attention to were great. I’m not sure if the problem was me or the writing style.
I really liked how the book literally just went from head to toe.
leesmyth's review against another edition
5.0
Very cool and well-illustrated book. The author takes us on a journey from head to foot, with digressions inspired by metaphor or other associations (e.g., the discussion of feet leads to discussion of measuring systems and travel, thence to maps). Again and again, just when one starts to think he might be going too far astray, he brings it back to medieval bodies - with a final, unexpected connection in the final chapter tying everything together.
I particularly liked this bit (p. 292):
Here's one other item I marked for future reference because of its synergy with some other interests (since I just took a class translating Beowulf from Old English). It comes up in the chapter on the stomach (p. 223):
I particularly liked this bit (p. 292):
Just as the term 'medieval tends today to be conflated with a certain muddiness or backward way of thinking, so too have we set the 'renaissance' up to be nothing but a success. [...] We admire this generation for their quick turnover of ideas because that is what we, at least for the last century or so, have admired the most in ourselves, in our own change-driven modern society. [...] The argument for the Middle Ages rests on a different set of far less glamorous standards: continuity, consistency, reflection, an ability to keep an idea alive come good times and bad. But we must not forget that looking back and looking forward are complementary things. Without medieval people preserving the classics in their copies and commentaries from Baghdad to Constantinople to Salerno and Paris, early modern people would have been left with little of substance to so dramatically rethink.
Here's one other item I marked for future reference because of its synergy with some other interests (since I just took a class translating Beowulf from Old English). It comes up in the chapter on the stomach (p. 223):
But to presume that all medieval humour therefore revolved around the bottom, or indeed that this humour could not in itself be sophisticated, again does the era a disservice. This Anglo-Saxon riddle, for instance, seems on the surface really to revel in the anus:Question: How do you make an asshole see?Look closer though, and we realise this is not just a smutty joke about the sphincter, it is a pun. Add an 'o' to the Latin for 'asshole', culus, and you get oculus, the Latin for 'eye'.
Answer: By adding an o.
riotsquirrrl's review against another edition
3.0
This book really doesn't work well as an audiobook. The format meant that I couldn't see the illustrations that other reviewers mentioned, and the book lacked clear demarcations between sections of the chapters, making it more of a mishmash than the print edition.
The conceit is a clever one, and it hits on a lot of different, interesting topics from medicine to religion to statecraft to penis trees. The result from listening to the audiobook is a whirlwind of a tour through a thousand years from Western Europe to the Levant that incorporates the three Abrahamic faiths that never really stops on one time period enough to really explore it as much as it warrants. For example, while Hartnell talks about the idea of the humors, he doesn't really thoroughly introduce the concept despite the way in which its theories undergird so much of how medieval people thought about the body. While I know enough about medieval history to know my Avicenna from my Ravenna, I think someone without a goodness background would be lost. The book does introduce some new, interesting tidbits, such as the discussion of monks committed to silence using sign language to communicate with one another; I'm definitely planning on looking into that more in detail.
The conceit is a clever one, and it hits on a lot of different, interesting topics from medicine to religion to statecraft to penis trees. The result from listening to the audiobook is a whirlwind of a tour through a thousand years from Western Europe to the Levant that incorporates the three Abrahamic faiths that never really stops on one time period enough to really explore it as much as it warrants. For example, while Hartnell talks about the idea of the humors, he doesn't really thoroughly introduce the concept despite the way in which its theories undergird so much of how medieval people thought about the body. While I know enough about medieval history to know my Avicenna from my Ravenna, I think someone without a goodness background would be lost. The book does introduce some new, interesting tidbits, such as the discussion of monks committed to silence using sign language to communicate with one another; I'm definitely planning on looking into that more in detail.