Robin Lane Fox is Emeritus Fellow of New College, Oxford, and taught Ancient History at Oxford University from 1977 to 2014. He is the author of Pagans and Christians (1986), The Unauthorized Version (1992) and many books on classical history, all of which have been widely translated, including Alexander the Great (1973), The Classical World (2005), Travelling Heroes (2008) and Augustine- Conversions to Confessions (2015), which won the Wolfson Prize for History. He has been the gardening correspondent of the Financial Times since 1970.
In this engaging history by the biographer of Alexander the Great,
lightened with wry donnish wit... readers can enjoy a vivid ride
through a part of Greece little visited in either body or mind.
*Financial Times*
an exciting addition to a flurry of books on ancient medicine in
recent years ... Lane Fox, who is known for his originality and his
exceptionally broad interests as a historian, which range from
Alexander the Great to Augustine, built The Invention of Medicine:
From Homer to Hippocrates on a decades' worth of impressive
scholarship ... His account of early Greek medicine is an engaging,
well informed introduction to the complex reality of the world of
healing in ancient Greece. Drawing on as many sources as possible,
yet making complex data accessible to a wide audience, Lane Fox
describes the skills of doctors and the experiences of their
patients with gusto ... groundbreaking
*The Lancet*
My favourite book from our lock-down times is The Invention of
Medicine by Robin Lane Fox, a great Oxford classicist's
contribution to the most needed discipline of the day. By original
and skilful argument, it shows how some of the direct observations
attributed to Hippocrates, the 'father of medicine', dated by him
earlier than most of us had thought before, influenced Thucydides
and other writers at the very birth of reasoned history.
*Aspects of History Books of the Year*
a most welcome contribution to this ever-growing field by one of
today's most eminent voices in ancient history. In his latest book,
Robin Lane Fox, probably best known for his work on Alexander the
Great and Augustine, offers a refreshing and at points
ground-breaking revision of the beginnings of ancient Greek
medicine ... In his attempt to disentangle and revise the
'invention of medicine' as a highly complex and multifaceted
phenomenon in early medical history Robin Lane Fox succeeds
brilliantly in constructing a narrative that is, at the same time,
innovative and introductive, informative and entertaining,
thoroughly historical yet with the occasional contemporary twist.
Writing in an accessible style, aimed at both a general and
informed readership and abounding in donnish wit, Lane Fox takes
his reader on a scholarly joyride
*Bryn Mawr Classical Review*
Radically, Lane Fox is keen to date Books One and Three of the
Epidemics very early in the story of the development of Greek
medicine, much earlier than anyone else has done ... The case is
ingenious ... He knows how to pace a narrative and he has a
raconteur's eye for detail.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Lane Fox leads us down intriguing paths of epigraphy, political
history, philology and archaeology
*London Review of Books*
Robin Lane Fox's remarkable The Invention of Medicine brings to
vivid life the island city of Thasos in the fifth century bc, when
it was home to the author of books of case studies now called
Epidemics I and 3, whose details are so forensic that we can
diagnose his patients' ailments and pinpoint their addresses in the
modern city. Around these works Lane Fox weaves a compelling
history of Greek medicine, before arguing that they betray such
scientific rigour that their author can be none other than
Hippocrates himself.
*Aspects of History Books of the Year*
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