Oxbow says: These nine essays, taken from the Acts of the International Colloquium held at the Maison de l'Orient et de la Mediterranee at Lyon in 2002, examine the subject of medicine and doctors in the texts of the ancient Near East. Subjects include images of birth in Mesopotamia, the human body and sexuality in Babylonian medical texts, skeletal markers of task activities in the Iron Age human remains from Tell Mishrife in central Syria, the treatment of illness in Babylonia, the digestion of food, palaeopathological approaches, healers at the Neo-Assyrian court, and the vocabulary used to describe the dead.