Foreword [Medical sciences in early modern Malta]

Abstract

It is both an honour and a pleasure for me to draw up a foreword for a book about a Maltese physician who was also versed in the medical science of his time. The invitation was extended to me by Dr Jurgen Gatt, a fellow medical graduate of my alma mater, the University of Malta. We both had the privilege of looking after patients on the wards at the old St Luke's Hospital, Guardamangia, in different but complementary roles. Away from medical practice, Dr Gatt is also a respected scholar of Classics, and a well-published, highly competent researcher, who comfortably cuts across several disciplines. He is one of a relatively small band of medically qualified persons who have successfully ventured out of the circumscribed environment of medicine into other disciplines and different scholarly milieux. In this regard, Jurgen is a worthy member of a select constellation of Maltese physicians among them Giuseppe Demarco himself, Temi Zammit, Paul Cassar, and Charles Savona-Ventura. Jurgen Gatt's expertise, authority and passion for the topic of this volume is clear in the first three chapters.