In view of the acknowledged though often stereotypical association of Jews with the medical profession, it is surprising that so little serious scholarly attention has been devoted to the study of Jews as physicians or members of allied medical fields. Until the late 1970s almost no general critical assessment of the history of lower-ranking medical personnel existed. Edward Kossoy and Abraham Ohry have made a significant contribution in gathering the diverse materials that they present on the history of feldshers in general and Jewish feldshers in particular.

Though it is unclear until the latter part of the book, the authors have an agenda that no doubt inspired this project. They are, as they state, concerned with the ‘implications of the past and present for the future’. Their book is a response to the goal set by the World Health Organization in 1978 to establish global health care by the year 2000. Through their historical evaluation of the role of the feldsher, they set the stage for a debate on the important function that feldshers might fulfil in the future. In addition to the historical material they present, the authors discuss the role of feldshers and feldsher equivalents in contemporary Israeli and Soviet health care systems. They view the feldsher as a model for the kind of medium-level medical worker who might best be able to reach the maximum number of people with basic medical service.

Kossoy and Ohry argue that the nature of this type of health care provider underwent significant transformation over the course of centuries. They trace the feldsher's development from barber-surgeon to mercenary ‘Feldscherer’ serving as low-ranking military personnel, though neither well trained nor highly skilled, to more highly skilled and educated surgeon. The authors consider various factors, such as the role of political rulers, involved in reshaping and redefining the feldsher. Particular attention is devoted to the development of feldsher education, as well as to the feldshers’ ‘armory’, the repertoire of techniques and treatments they employed.

The authors ambitiously attempt to create an image of the feldsher and his circumstances that is sweeping in its historical and geographical scope from the Middle Ages to the post-Second World War era, in the east and the west, Jewish and non-Jewish.