Quid pro quo: Studies in the History of Drugs

All too often ancient herbal and other remedies have been dismissed as ’simply’ folklore, of no relevance to medical science. John Riddle’s approach, however, has been to explore the history of drugs with the hypothesis that ancient and medieval medicines were effective - a methodology that he expounds in the final essay (hitherto unpublished). Indeed, he shows, both from detailed case-studies and from the comparison of the listings given by classical and medieval authorities with those in ...