Edwin Mellen Pr.

Medicine and Scottish missionaries in the Northern Malawi Region 1875-1930; quests for health in a colonial society.

They came to save bodies as well as souls. Hokkanen (history and ethnology, U. of Jyvaskyla) looks closely at the relationship between medicine and religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, taking the Livingstone Mission of the Free Church of Scotland in Malawi as his primary case study. He defines the ideas behind practicing medicine as a missionary act, then works through the direct application of that idea in the Scottish missionary movement. Particularly interesting are his observations on the self-image of those who sacrificed themselves to religion and science simultaneously and the emergence of the missionary medical professional as the guardian of indigenous health as well as the primary reliever of suffering. He also contrasts the missionaries' work with that of African healers and the missionaries' later efforts to expand their sphere of control and influence. This serves not only as an historical work but a cautionary tale. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Medical theory about the body and the soul in the Middle Ages; the first Western medical curriculum at Monte Cassino.

Grudzen (history, U. of Phoenix and San Jose City College) examines the development of medical theory and practice in what would seem to be an unlikely place: a medieval monastery. However, Monte Cassino was actually a logical place for people with medical information to gather, as it was a venue for humanistic learning and fortunate to be a repository for Islamic medical information. Grudzen describes the historical contexts of Monte Cassino's fortunate position in space and time and examines the purposes of the medical scholars there, analyzes the debates of body and soul in Galen and neoplatonism as well as Christianity, and contrasts the thought of St. Augustine, Nemesius of Emesa, the Eastern Church and Nestorian Christianity on the body, and the influence of Jewish and Islamic thought on the development of the Western medical curriculum. Grudzen's work on Constantine the African's contributions is particularly interesting. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Numbers and numeracy in Chinese culture, language, and education; the social substratum of the development of mathematical thinking.

Pellatt (Chinese studies, Newcastle U., UK) examines the development of mathematics and calculation in China against the background of indigenous Chinese philosophy, scientific thinking and statecraft. Coverage includes an historical overview of the role of number in Chinese philosophy and ideology; the tradition of math education in China and the way in which Chinese children, teachers, and parents are driven by the examination ethic; numbers in language and ways in which Chinese number expressions differ from, and are possibly easier than, other languages; number expressions in colloquial language; the use of numbering in sociolinguistic systems, like the family; the manipulation of number in the "print environment" of the state; and a brief "personal profile" of each of the numbers from 1 to 10, 12, 100, and 10,000 — the associations and symbolism surrounding numbers in Chinese culture. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

Spiritual aspirations connected with mathematics; the experience of American University students.

What draws people to study mathematics? The money? The power? According to Witz (education, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), a very real part of the draw are beauty and truth. To the mathematical mind, the elegance of the mathematical project is reason alone for study, along with talent and the sheer audacity of being right. Witz finds other significant reasons for studying math or making it a career in his intensive interviews with students, including their need for an intellectual challenge and their need to understand the human being as a whole. Witz details the interview project, which included teacher education students, and analyzes the responses from individual responders. He also finds a rather surprising thread that seems to run through many responses, which is almost entirely metaphysical in nature. Math majors want to know what happens across the universe, and their attraction is generally metaphysical as well as practical. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)