Astro-Medicine: Astrology and Medicine, East and West (review)

Steven J. Williams
From: Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume 84, Number 1, Spring 2010
pp. 120-121 | 10.1353/bhm.0.0329
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
As every Europeanist knows, astrology used to be good science. It used to be essential to
both medicaltheory and practice. It used to be part of every person's Weltanschauung. The big message
of the book under review here is that the foregoing is true not only of Europeand I speak as a historian
of its Middle Agesbut of many other places on the planet as well.
This collection of essays, which come (with one exception) from a colloquium held at the Warburg
Institutein 2005, "gives [us]," as the editors put it, "a first glance at the contacts between astrology and
medicine, and opens up the subject to future research" (p. xi). The ground covered is extensivethe
ancient Near East and Egypt, classical Greece and Rome, the Islamic world, ancient China and India,
Tibet, and medieval through modern Europe. The idea of correspondences between the microcosm of
the body and the macrocosm of the universein particular the moon, the planets, and the
constellationsis a longstanding one and can be said to be a core component of the
premodern mentalit, what we might describe as human history's ancien rgime culturel. (Think "great
chain of being.") It is a phenomenon common to learned and popular culture. And it brings in its train
not only an astrologically oriented medicine but the related "sciences" of talismans, astrobotany,
astrominerology, astropharmacology, physiognomy, onomancy, and alchemy as well.
Other more particular cultural constants appearing the world over are the use of astrology for providing
a diagnosis, a prognosis, and an explanation for a particular disease or ailment; for selecting, fabricating,
and administering medicines; for carrying out medical procedures; for determining the most propitious
time for conception; and for discerning the physical and mental characteristics of a child whether in the
womb or newly born.
An attempt at comparative cultural history on a global scale, this book makes a very successful initial
foray into new and difficult territory. Of course the book cannot do everything, and its authors are duly
aware of its limitations. Indeed, beyond the rich content of the essays themselves is the repeated call for
more work to be done on several fronts: on cultural connections and lines of transmission, on the broad
similarities linking the various traditions, on the differences separating them, and on the specific cultural
elaborations and innovations that so often are the consequence of ideas moving from one place to
another. A grand synthesis is not offered here, but the attentive reader can surmise something of its
broad outlines.
The volume contains the following articles: Nils P. Heeel, "Astrological Medicine in Babylonia"; Vivian
Nutton, "Greek Medical Astrology and the Boundaries of Medicine"; Hilary M. Carey, "Medieval Latin
Astrology and the Cycles of Life: William English and English Medicine in Cambridge, Trinity College MS

O.5.26" (with a transcription of William English's middle English translation of De urina non visa on pp.
55-74); Concetta Pennuto, "The Debate on Critical Days in Renaissance Italy"; Y. Tzvi Langermann, "The
Astral Connections of Critical Days. Some Late Antique Sources Preserved in Hebrew and Arabic"; Anna
Akasoy, "Arabic Physiognomy as a Link between Astrology and Medicine"; Vivienne Lo, "Heavenly Bodies
in Early China: Astro-Physiology in Context"; Audrius Beinorius, "Astral Hermeneutics: Astrology and
Medicine in India"; Vesna A. Wallace, "A Convergence of Medical and Astro-Sciences in Indian Tantric
Buddhism: A Case of the Klacakratantra"; Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim, "Tibetan Medical Astrology"; and Dorian
Gieseler Greenbaum, "From Lilly to Steiner and Jung: Temperament in Astrology and Psychology,
Seventeenth and Twentieth Centuries." Together they make for a fascinating read.