Food and Health in Early Modern Europe - by David Gentilcore (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"David Gentilcore's Food and Health in Early Modern Europe ... does an excellent job of evaluating how the medical philosophers of the time viewed food and how that may have influenced consumers.... [it] is an interesting read, thoughtful, dense, and thoroughly detailed, making it a good reference piece." - Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies

"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." -CHOICE

"An excellent book! Well-written, it has a logical structure and strong arguments. Its particular strengths are the European perspective, the careful analysis of discourses, the many and telling quotations, and the systematic attention to regional and social differences. This book is an eminent and original contribution to food historiography." --Peter Scholliers, Professor of History and FOST (Social & Cultural Food Studies), Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

"David Gentilcore had the happy idea of combining two topics that are usually studied separately, the history of medicine and the history of food. Basing his work on the rich literature of advice on a healthy diet, Gentilcore compares the food anxieties of early modern times with our own but contrasts the recommendations, noting the rejection of fish, fruit and vegetables as 'dangerously cold and moist'. The result is a valuable contribution to both the intellectual and the social history of early modern Europe." --Peter Burke, Emeritus Professor of Cultural History, University of Cambridge, UK

"The current proliferation of dietary advice makes David Gentilcore's witty and learned book especially welcome. He reminds us that we moderns have no monopoly on the application of diet to health; doctors and patients have agreed and disagreed about what to eat (and drink) for generations. But notions of what constituted health, and what foods promoted it, have changed drastically, with regional and religious factors also playing roles. With his deep understanding of both food and medicine, Gentilcore is the ideal guide through an era when too much fruit might kill you, and even children drank alcohol every day." --Anita Guerrini, Professor of History, Oregon State University, USA

"Advice about food and drink has always been fundamental to medicine, but European tastes rapidly changed in response to the development of global trade and new ideas. Gentilcore captures those transformations wonderfully in this wide-ranging book, highlighting not only the novelties and curiosities but the enduring legacies of food culture in a period that fundamentally shaped European stomachs, palates, and health." --Harold J. Cook, John F. Nickoll Professor of History, Brown University, USA

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