[Sca-cooks] Thoughts on food as medicine
Raphaella DiContini
raphaellad at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 14 13:16:29 PST 2011
Thank you Johnnae! I wish I had your skill at finding hard to get sources!
My focus is really more on the Italian, but I have been searching further afield
to try to get the broadest base of information possible before I narrow it down
so I'm not relying on just 1-2 sources. I've been looking at information from
other sources (i.e. not just Italian) in hopes of seeing if medical
recommendations were spread much like the blatant copying of recipes/ cookbooks
that happend at this time.
I actually found "Who goes drunk to bed begets but a girl": The history of a
Renaissance medical proverb- online Monday and read it on the bus ride home.
It's also mostly focused on the English, but provides some interesting back
ground and succinct summation of Aristotelianism, vs. Hippocratic theory and how
Galen straddles the two (mostly leaning towards Aristotelianism, except for
being more in line with Hippocrates’s two-seed theory of procreation). I found
it amusing, and It's definitely worth a read.
If by any chance you might know where I can get my hands on the 1593 Obstetrics
textbook, La commare o raccoglitrice I would be extremely and eternally
grateful, or electronic versions of any of the many health manuals printed in
Italy1400-1600. I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Luigi Belloni's edition of
Michele Savanarola, Gioberti, Marinello, or Mecurio.
I've found some great books, but most of them just lightly touch on a small
aspect of what I'm looking at. I bought myself a bunch of related books as a
holiday gift.
Here's my current reading list:
The Medical Renaissance of the 16th Century, Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance
Venice, Collected Letters of Renaissance Feminists, Women in the Streets (Essays
on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy), Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance
Italy, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice (Twelve Essays on Patrician Society),
and The Renaissance Man and His Children (Childbirth and Early Childhood in
Florence 1300-1600), the Boundaries of Eros (Sex Crime & Sexuality in
Renaissance Venice).
I had also found a bunch of interesting articles, several of which I've written
reviews for, if anyone is ineterested, this is just a small selection.
The fate of popular terms for female anatomy in the age of
print: http://www.jstor.org/stable/286711
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/286711.pdf?acceptTC=true
Anatomizing the past: Physicians and History in Renaissance Culture:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2901531
Science and humanism in the Italian Renaissance:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1852869.pdf?acceptTC=true
Theory, Everyday Practice and Three Fifteenth Century Physicians:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/301784.pdf
Medieval Women's Guides to Food During Pregnancy: Origins, Texts, and Traditions
http://journaldev.cbmh.ca/index.php/cbmh/article/viewFile/292/291
and this, The Sources of Eucharius Rösslin's ‘Rosegarden for Pregnant Women and
Midwives' (1513)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668903/pdf/medhis5302-01-167.pdf
The book that started this field of study for me is "How to Do It - Guides to
Good Living for Renaissance Italians" by Rudolph M. Bell and I can't recommend
it enough. It's packed full of fantastic information and I think it's lively
enough for even non-scholars to be kept interested.
In joyous service,
Raffaella
________________________________
From: Johnna Holloway johnnae at mac.com
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