He is duly astonished by the sophistication and standards of care and teaching in the hospital in Isfahan and gradually rises through the ranks to become a senior physician. The protagonist, Rob Cole, is forced to pretend to be Jewish due to the customs and taboos of the times of both learning and practicing medicine. Several strong themes arise in the novel, including the intersection of religion and belief with medicine, as well as the continuing tension between honouring tradition yet breaking with it to further knowledge. Describing life and travel in the middle ages in vivid detail with varying degrees of historical accuracy, the narrative moves from harrowing poverty in mediaeval London, through apprenticeship to an English barber-surgeon to life in the medical school in Isfahan in Persia. The plot of The Physician ( Der Medicus in the German imprint) revolves around the adventures of a young English man travelling to Persia in the 11 th century to learn medicine from Avicenna, the greatest physician of the Islamic Golden Age. This linguistic and cultural divergence is reflected by the fact that the only original English edition in print is published by a Spanish publishing house, and that the novel has spawned a German language movie. Even though the author is American, his book is virtually unknown in the English-speaking world but has been hugely popular in Germany, Spain and other countries in continental Europe.

Medicus: The Power of Knowledge is a comprehensive and probing survey of almost five millennia of medical history based on a multi-million selling novel, The Physician (2012), by Noah Gordon. However, medical history has insights to offer on how medicine has responded to similar crises in the past that can provide useful perspectives on how we deal with present and future pandemics. The closing of an innovative exhibition of medical history in the ancient German city of Speyer may seem to be a small loss in the context of the many enormous tragic losses of life and livelihood of Covid-19. Exhibition Review by Prof Desmond O’Neill, MD, FRCPI

Book the physician noah gordon