Blood and bile

Are books becoming an adjunct to TV? Both of these are good reads, but both feel influenced by — and yearning for — television. Medieval Bodies could be the script for a landmark BBC Four series, while the author of How to Behave Badly in Renaissance Britain came to prominence as farthingale consultant on programmes such as Tudor Monastery Farm. She can tell you everything you never wanted to know about codpieces.

Medieval Bodies skips between English, Welsh, Hebraic and Islamic medicine with ease, touching on caliphs and kings, Mamluks and djinns. One gem here is the inventor Ismail al-Jazari, the Heath Robinson of 13th-century Baghdad. He designed for the Artuqid King Salih a mechanical device to wash his hands — a sort of ablutionary Teasmaid which included a singing model bird and an automatically proffered towel. This in 1206.

But before we can learn more, the author whisks us onwards, because the book is structured so that each chapter is a different body part, and the handwashing machine is part of the chapter about hands and we need to get on to the ‘handfasting’ of a couple in marriage, the king’s hands healing scrofula, the sign-language used between silent monks at the Abbey de Cluny in the 10th century, and so on.