Systems of Classification in Premodern Medical Cultures puts historical illness concepts in cross-cultural perspective, investigating perceptions, constructions and experiences of health and illness, from antiquity to the 17th century.

Introduction: sickness, cultural classifications and local epistemologies; PART I Disease concepts and healing: new approaches to knowledge and practice in premodern medical texts and traditions; 1 Distinctive issues in the history of medicine in antiquity; 2 How to read a recipe? Working backwards from the prescription to the complaint; 3 Experiencing the dead in ancient Egyptian healing texts; PART II Disease classifications in premodern medical texts and traditions from the Near East, Mediterranean and East Asia; 4 Types of diagnoses in Papyrus Ebers and Smith; 5 Ancient Egyptian prescriptions for the back and abdomen and their Mesopotamian and Mediterranean counterparts; 6 Disease concepts and classifications in ancient Mesopotamian medicine; 7 Classification of illnesses in the Hippocratic Corpus; 8 The delicacy of the rabbinic asthenes: sickness, weakness or self-indulgence?; 9 The Paradise of Wisdom: streams of tradition in the first medical encyclopaedia in Arabic; 10 The Tree of Nosology in Tibetan medicine; PART III Mental illness in ancient medical systems; 11 Disturbing disorders: reconsidering the problem of 'mental diseases' in ancient Mesopotamia; 12 Classification, explanation and experience: mental disorder in Graeco-Roman antiquity