Food and health in early modern Europe [electronic resource] : diet, medicine and society, 1450-1800 / David Gentilcore.

ISBN:

9781474219563

Title:

Author:

Gentilcore, David.

Personal Author:

Gentilcore, David.

Publication Information:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2015.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 254 p.) : ill.

Contents:

Healthy food: Renaissance dietetics, c.1450 to c.1650 -- Healthy food: the fall and rise of dietetics, c. 1650 to c. 1800 -- Rich food, poor food: diet, physiology and social rank -- Regional food: nature and nation in Europe -- Holy food: spiritual and bodily health -- Vegetable food: the vegetarian option -- New World food: the Columbian exchange and its European impact -- Liquid food: drinking for health.

Subject Term:

Health promotion -- Europe.

Nutrition -- Europe.

Food supply -- Europe.

Food consumption -- Europe.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2015

Publication Information:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2015.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
613.094 23	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2016 Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is both a history of food practices and a history of the medical discourse about that food. It is also an exploration of the interaction between the two: the relationship between evolving foodways and shifting medical advice on what to eat in order to stay healthy. It provides the first in-depth study of printed dietary advice covering the entire early modern period, from the late-15th century to the early-19th; it is also the first to trace the history of European foodways as seen through the prism of this advice. David Gentilcore offers a doctor's-eye view of changing food and dietary fashions: from Portugal to Poland, from Scotland to Sicily, not forgetting the expanding European populations of the New World. In addition to exploring European regimens throughout the period, works of materia medica, botany, agronomy and horticulture are considered, as well as a range of other printed sources, such as travel accounts, cookery books and literary works. The book also includes 30 illustrations, maps and extensive chapter bibliographies with web links included to further aid study. Food and Health in Early Modern Europe is the essential introduction to the relationship between food, health and medicine for history students and scholars alike.

Author Notes

David Gentilcore is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leicester, UK. He is the author of Italy and the Potato: A History, 1550-2000 (2012), Pomodoro!: A History of the Tomato in Italy (2010) and Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (2006).

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Social history done well (unequivocally the case here) is a pleasure to read. Views of food, medicine, and societal practice confected in the cauldron of Europe's early modern period could easily, in less scholarly and competent hands, have produced a concoction intellectually difficult to digest. The author's recipe for avoiding this is simple but skillfully executed. Two initial chapters divide the period surveyed (c.1450-c.1650; c.1650-c.1800) to clarify the shifting views of diet and medicine. In brief, the revival of Galen's emphasis on dietary regimen and prevention (renascent as a result of humanism) is eventually challenged by iatrochemical (Paracelsian) and iatromechanical views emphasizing therapeutics and curative drugs. These views are, by the end of this diachronic survey, countered by a return to a dietetics again based on hygiene and prevention. With this foundation established, subsequent chapters explore the interaction of these ideas with changing views of social rank, religion, vegetarianism, beverage consumption, and the appearance of new foods and drinks associated with the Columbian exchange. It would be difficult to imagine any undergraduate student, irrespective of major, who could leave unsated from this intellectual feast. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. --Robert T. Ingoglia, New Jersey City University