SC - Re: Sauces and Humors

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Anne-Marie Rousseau wrote:
> 
> Hi all from Anne-Marie.
> Re: humoral theory in medieval food.
> 
> I have this theory of my own...it might be possible that humoral thoery
> in medieval food is like oatbran today. Sure, we all know we're supposed
> to eat it, and there's lots of cookbooks on bookstore shelves that
> ascribe to its wonders. But how many of us cook that way every day?
> 
> Perhaps, just like modernn "health food", humoral thoery was just that, a
> theory, that the well-read medieval person would know about, but most
> people had only a passing knowledge of?

It's possible. However, European humoral medicine is more or less
directly traceable to its source. The big name in perod European
medicine is Galen, who appears to have adapted his theories from various
Arabic doctors and sources, who in turn picked up those concepts from
the area now known as India, whose people appear to have picked up the
ideas from the Chinese. 

Where is all this leading, you ask? Simply this: the Chinese are still
practicing this type of medicine to a great extent. While we could
argue, rightly or wrongly, that Europeans may never have really taken
the concept of humoral medecine seriously, the evidence that the ideas
are still taken very seriously in their country of origin might suggest
that Europeans may once have viewed the concept a bit more seriously
too.

Of course, for the non-wealthy, starvation was a far worse enemy than
humoral imbalances, and it may be that the uneducated and the poor might
have been more concerned with filling their belllies than with the
theorems of Galen...

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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