Waiting on Wednesday: The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny

Welcome back to another installment of Waiting on Wednesday, hosted by Breaking the Spine. I've been feeling historical lately, so here's a book set in 16th century Italy that caught my eye.

The Book of Madness and Cures by Regina O'Melveny

Publication Date: April 3rd, 2012
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

From Goodreads:
Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16th century Venice: a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entrée to this all-male profession, and inspired in her a shared mission to understand the secrets of the human body.

Then her father disappears and Gabriella faces a crisis: she is no longer permitted to treat her patients, women who need her desperately, without her father's patronage. She sets out across Europe to find where-and why-he has gone. Following clues from his occasional enigmatic letters, Gabriella crosses Switzerland, Germany and France, entering strange and forbidding cities. She travels to Scotland, the Netherlands, and finally to Morocco. In each new land she probes the mystery of her father's flight, and open new mysteries of her own. Not just mysteries of ailments and treatments, but ultimate mysteries of mortality, love, and the timeless human spirit.

Filled with medical lore and sensuous, vivid details of Renaissance life, The Book of Madness and Cures is an intoxicating and unforgettable debut