The forerunner of this textbook for students of medicine and the healthcare professions was first published by Eduard Seidler in 1966 with the title *Geschichte der Pflege des kranken Menschen* (History of the Care for the Sick).  Several editions of the textbook focused mainly on the history of care, in accordance with the strict division between care and medicine in Germany.  In 1993, Eduard Seidler, this time together with Karl-Heinz Leven, aimed at combining the history of medicine and health-care in the sixth edition.  The authors thereby tried to connect the developments of both professions without neglecting the many tensions between the two fields.  Now, ten years later, in the introduction to the seventh edition, Seidler and Leven emphasize that they have retained the approach of 1993 and have tried to integrate new research from various fields of the history of medicine. 

As a textbook aiming to provide an overview of the history of medicine and care throughout the centuries, it is necessarily a tour de force.  The first chapter on the beginnings of care---which has undergone few changes since the editions of the 1960s---as well as the subsequent synopsis of medicine and care in early cultures remain quite laconic and sketchy.  The section on Graeco-Roman medicine as the root of modern western medicine, however, provides the reader with a well structured narrative: the development of Hippocratic medicine and care as well as Galen\'s concepts are convincingly depicted.  Then, before focusing on medieval traditions, the authors make a short excursus into Byzantine medicine---strongly influenced by the Greek tradition---and they hint at the poor western reception of classical medicine in early medieval times.  The authors then show how the development of monastic care under the Benedictine order was crucial for the development of a Christian European tradition of healthcare.  In the case of medicine, they emphasize the high standard of Arab medicine during the Middle Ages and chronicle how Greek medical knowledge flowed back to the Christian west via medical texts in Arabic, where it was disseminated in the newly established European universities.  Seidler and Leven stress that these developments fostered the division between medicine and care, since the two fields were hardly ever connected afterwards.  The following chapters on humanism and the Enlightenment point to transformations in medical knowledge, in parallel with the gradual integration of the exact sciences into medicine.  The authors also show that healthcare remained relatively unconcerned by this development.  It was only in the course of the eighteenth century that the integration of medicine into the everyday life of hospitals slowly began to affect the practice of healthcare.  In the fifty-page chapter on the nineteenth century, Seidler and Leven only have the space to brush over the numerous developments in the fields of medicine and care.  They try to include the development of medicine as a natural science, the splitting up of medical studies into several curricula, the emergence of social hygiene, as well as the beginnings of communal health services and insurance systems.  In the field of care, the authors focus on war developments, including a section on the Red Cross.  They also discuss the influence of the women\'s movement on the emergence of professional healthcare.  The twentieth century, rife with complex developments, is also end-owed with very little space; here the textbook mainly concentrates on the First World War and the Third Reich.  In the section on medicine and National Socialism especially, the authors succeed in providing a short critical synopsis of the most important developments. 

An appendix consisting of several printed sources and a bibliography, including a selection of standard works as well as new research, affords readers the possibility of exploring their own areas of interest. 

On the whole, the book provides quite a good survey of developments in the history of medicine and care.  However, contrary to the intent outlined in the introduction, many chapters deal with the history of care and medicine in two separate sections and the tensions between the two fields remain mostly latent.  Finally, some sections are so ambitious in their scope that they must necessarily remain imprecise.