Mistress of the Art of Death
by Ariana Franklin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Ariana FranklinEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2007-02-06
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Putnam Adult
Book Reviews of Mistress of the Art of Death
Book Review: Read up on the Schola Medica Salernitana before bashing this!
Summary: 5 Stars
I LOVE these books; I find them medically and historically interesting with a liberal dash of the macabre and a feisty but not overwhelming romance. You may not like this book. You may not like the characters or the death, etc., but it is irritating to read so many negative reviews based on perceived anachronisms.
There is a POINT that the main character is from Salerno. While I don't mean to generalize, many of us grew up hearing about how backward medical and scientific thinking was during "The Dark Ages" but we don't learn about Islamic medicine. Check up on the book The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb) or The Method of Medicine (Kitab al-Tasrif). These books were so "ahead" of their time that the Western world used them for centuries and centuries, and both were published before the time period of this book. Heck, The Canon of Medicine is available on Amazon!
There are still plenty of anachronisms in this book, and the author does stretch the truth but not nearly as much as people think because they can't get out of the Western mindset. Yes, hand washing was a big deal in the Islamic world and they were on track in terms of contagion and even theorized about an early version of germ theory. Diet and exercise? Yup, they knew about that. Inhaled opiates? Check. Women as doctors? Well, Trotula supposedly held a chair at the medical school.
To quote from The Annals of Thoratic Surgery "She [Trotula] taught her students about three types of diseases: inherited, contagious, and self-generated. Her instruction focused on diagnosing various illnesses, using tools such as urine analysis, pulse rate, and skin tone evaluation. Her students were able to differentiate between typhoid and malaria, they could calculate fever temperatures and estimate recovery times, and they could treat complex wounds with some chance of success"
ARGGH! Obviously, you can love, like, or hate this book for a variety of reasons, but it just irks me if people pass this book up based on reviews about how crazy it is for the main character to know about medicine.
Summary of Mistress of the Art of Death
A chilling, mesmerizing novel that combines the best of modern forensic thrillers with the detail and drama of historical fiction.In medieval Cambridge, England, four children have been murdered. The crimes are immediately blamed on the town's Jewish community, taken as evidence that Jews sacrifice Christian children in blasphemous ceremonies. To save them from the rioting mob, the king places the Cambridge Jews under his protection and hides them in a castle fortress. King Henry I is no friend of the Jews-or anyone, really-but he is invested in their fate. Without the taxes received from Jewish merchants, his treasuries would go bankrupt. Hoping scientific investigation will exonerate the Jews, Henry calls on his cousin the King of Sicily-whose subjects include the best medical experts in Europe-and asks for his finest "master of the art of death," an early version of the medical examiner. The Italian doctor chosen for the task is a young prodigy from the University of Salerno. But her name is Adelia-the king has been sent a mistress of the art of death.
Adelia and her companions-Simon, a Jew, and Mansur, a Moor-travel to England to unravel the mystery of the Cambridge murders, which turn out to be the work of a serial killer, most likely one who has been on Crusade with the king. In a backward and superstitious country like England, Adelia must conceal her true identity as a doctor in order to avoid accusations of witchcraft. Along the way, she is assisted by Sir Rowley Picot, one of the king's tax collectors, a man with a personal stake in the investigation. Rowley may be a needed friend, or the fiend for whom they are searching. As Adelia's investigation takes her into Cambridge's shadowy river paths and behind the closed doors of its churches and nunneries, the hunt intensifies and the killer prepares to strike again . .
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