2011 Anglo American Conference
Healthy living in the medieval and early modern Europe.
Medical and lay perspectives
Panel I. Sleep, exercise and passions.
Organizers: Sandra Cavallo (Royal Holloway); Silvia De Renzi (Open University)
In classical and medieval medicine prevention fulfilled as important a role as treatment and was
seen as a branch of medicine. For Galen, in particular, a key aspect of the physician’s task was
that of advising patients about the correct way of living in order to stay in good health. Though
these ideas still appear firmly established in medical theory at the onset of the early modern
period, the emphasis of recent historiography on medical consumerism has led scholars to
concentrate on therapeutic medicine and medicinal remedies rather than on behavioral regimes
and the care of the healthy body. These two panels aim to re-direct the attention to the
measures adopted in everyday life to preserve health through an investigation of the
persistence of the preventative paradigm from the middle ages to the eighteenth century. The
six papers will analyse from a range of perspectives the circulation and reception of the doctrine
of the six non natural things from which health was seen to depend (the air breathed, the food
and drink ingested, sleeping and waking, movement and rest, evacuation and repletion, the
passions of the soul) and the adaptability of the paradigm to changing social, religious and
medical contexts. They will reconstruct tensions within the medical debate ranging from the
inherent clash between the growing universality of medical advice and the principle of individual
complexions to the impact of changes in how bodily functions were understood. Attention will
also be given to the relationships between guidelines and practice, including the perspectives of
lay people and how preventative concerns informed actual lifestyles.
Chair: Silvia De Renzi
Bill MacLehose
Sleep, health and pathology in Medieval medicine
Tessa Storey
Managing the passions and comforting the spirits: medical advice and
lay experience in Italy, 1470-1700
Sandra Cavallo
Gentle exercise and genteel life: movement and health in medical
advice and lay practice in 16th and 17th century Italy
PAPER ABSTRACTS
Bill MacLehose (UCL)
Sleep, Health and Pathology in Medieval Medicine
From Late Antiquity onward, western medicine viewed sleep as essential for the proper
maintenance of health, and as one of the six variables in each individual’s physical status. With
the revival of Galenic medicine in Western Europe beginning in the late eleventh century, the
category of sleep became a source of increased interest and concern. Medieval medicine viewed
the state of being asleep as having the potential to either benefit or damage the physiological
and psychological state of the individual. This paper explores the understandings of sleep by
later medieval medical practitioners, who in different ways recognised and elaborated upon the
positive and negative effects of sleep on the general maintenance of health. The primary
purpose of sleep lay in the physiological process of digestion of food, which occurred
predominantly while the body rested. The body’s strength was revived not from rest per se, but
from the production of renewed nourishment for each of the body’s parts, through a series of
processes in which the food was concocted (‘cooked’), purified, and spread throughout the
body.
At the same time, other internal processes related more to the brain than to the stomach or
liver brought with them intrinsic dangers. Just as the external parts of the body rested during
sleep, so also the rational faculty, the individual’s ability to use reason and to choose to act
properly, was inoperable during sleep. Instead, the mental processes were ruled by sensations
and images stored in the imagination, a part of the brain that remained active even during
sleep. The sleeper’s imagination, unrestrained by reason, often produced nonsensical and
violent images, and led to reactions of fear, pleasure or anger. Thus sleep, which was
physiologically necessary for digestion and health, at the same time led too easily to mental
processes that could damage both body and soul.
Tessa Storey (Royal Holloway)
Managing the passions and comforting the spirits: medical advice and lay experience on Italy
1470-1700
Italian healthy living guides published in the vernacular between the late fifteenth and late
seventeenth centuries invariably contained advice on the management of the passions of the
soul, which constituted one of the six ‘non-naturals’. The authors of these popular tracts sought
to explain the complicated relationship between the passions, the spirits, the soul and inner
heat and how these affected health. They also offered advice on how to regulate the passions so
as to avoid sudden death and promote longevity. This included the use of medicines,
fumigations and a wide range of activities, such as singing, pleasant conversations and listening
to music. The advice offered was neither uniform nor static and over the period examined, the
content, emphasis and the approach of authors towards their readers shifted. This paper will
consider some key changes in advice on the passions, and in the different conceptual models
adopted by doctors in their attempts to convey the mechanics of this complex aspect of early
modern medical thought to the lay reader. It also explores evidence of lay perspectives on the
passions, which can be compared to medical theory. Using letters and contemporary accounts it
examines how lay people perceived the effects of the ‘passions’ on their health and the ways in
which they sought to regulate their own or others’ passions as part of the daily practice of
healthy living.
Sandra Cavallo (Royal Holloway)
Gentle exercise and genteel life: movement and health in medical advice and lay practice in
16th and 17th century Italy.
Exercise was traditionally regarded as a key component of a healthy lifestyle. In humoural
theory exercise was seen as a way to ease the expulsion of the superfluities that built up in
various parts of the body during the three physiological digestions whereby food was turned
into physical matters. If this residual waste was not removed it could severely damage the body,
causing blockages, pain, fevers and other ailments. A comparative examination of the health
advice literature published in Italy between 1500 and 1700 and of its medieval and ancient
predecessors reveals however that what was meant by ‘exercise’ varies considerably over time:
from the late sixteenth century onwards this was increasingly associated with various types of
moderate physical movement rather than with sports. Taking issue with representations of the
health advice literature as inherently static and insensitive to social and cultural change, the
paper will relate these transformations to the rise of new ideals of genteel life and new
definitions of masculinity visible also in other genres of conduct literature. Moreover, the paper
will address the problematic issue of the relationship between advice and practice. Using the
family correspondence of members of the Roman nobility it will examine lay accounts of the
effects of immoderate exercise upon the body, showing that considerable convergence existed
between the ideas of medical professionals and the concerns of laypeople. In the seventeenth
century the view that exercising regularly but gently was key to wellbeing occupied central stage
in the everyday practices of genteel people.