Dissection and Vivisection in the European Renaissance. Roger FrenchHygiene in the Early Medical Tradition. Heikki Mikkeli
Dillenberger's book, despite my frustration over what is not fully elaborated, I have found helpful and stimulating for a consideration of a crisis period for artistic imagery, and personally involved artists, through the early reformations. It should serve students of the reformations and of art history well and help us to read better the visual, Poussin-like. Merbacks colorful volume is more complex and confusing. The very precise concern with details of punishment (with a fear of a return to punishment as public spectacle in the US), somewhat obscures more general and interesting issues about medieval and renaissance "spectacle," and a reading of depictions of the Passion that may frustrate the art and church historians, but attract some medics, while an interesting contribution to the history of punishment really requires more depth in chronicles or court records to satisfy social historians. CHRISTOPHER F. BLACK University of Glasgow