Helen King presents us with a vast array of evidence about women and medicine and the use of the body in the ancient Greek world. However, she moves beyond the title of her piece and that is when the book loses focus and becomes difficult to follow. This is not a book for the layperson regardless of this, it requires a basic understanding of at least ancient Greek society and better yet some medical or gender studies background.

Dr. Mobley has written a novel that provides a candid view of many of the problems facing patients and their physicians in todays world of "managed Care." Although its seting is fiction it hits hard on the real problems of providing care for patienhts within a system that is no longer managed by the physician and the patient. In this time of "crisis" over the costs of health care he has been able to draw from his personal experiences and put the problems in a story that is all to true. This is must reading for every concerned patient and physician. John F. Farrington, M.D.

Jackson's text is an excellent text covering the history of melancholia and depression. It is most likely to be of interest to students of psychology and clinical social work. It traces the way our society has looked at depression and melancholia over the centuries. This is important to us because it forms part of the context in which we view depression and melancholia. Some of the metaphors we use in modern language to describe melancholia come from the concept of the four humours of ancient Greek medical thought. It goes beyond ancient history, and tracks depression through medical and literature of various periods. The coverage of Emil Kraepelin and Eugen Bleuler was excellent.

If your involvement in psychology is limited to reading "Psychology Today" magazine, this may not be for you. I find this text does not devote enough space in the discussion of 20th century theories of and treatments for depression and melancholia. I would prefer more space to a discussion of A. T. Beck and Martin E. P. Seligman's views of depression. Because I am a student of "attribution theory," I would have liked to see a fuller development of the work Seligman started and which was more fully developed by Lyn Abramson and associates. Modern psychiatry tends to view depression in terms as an imbalance of certain neurotransmitters in the brain and treats it with antidepressants including MAO inhibitors and the more modern selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, to name a few. I would also have been happier with more full discussion of psychopharmacological intervention.