Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages: Balancing the Humours

Cover
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Women as Healers, Women as Food Producers
	Anthropological approaches
	Work by medievalists
	How can we approach medieval sources?
	Women as healers
	Women as food producers
	Nurturing and gender
	Pushed out of the medical profession, pushed out of the kitchen
2. Medieval Theories of Nutrition and Health
	The Greek tradition
	Galen of Pergamum
	Anthimus
	Medical writers in the medieval Islamic world
	The medieval west
3. The Special Problem of Nutrition and Women’s Health
	Class, gender, diet, and humoral theory
	Aristotle
	The Hippocratic Corpus
	Soranus of Ephesus
	Galen of Pergamum
	The Islamic texts of the Arabic systematists
	The Trotula
	Hildegard of Bingen
	De secretis mulierum
	Regimina sanitatis and Tacuina sanitatis
	Michele Savonarola
	Other writers
	Non-medical texts and folk beliefs
4. Theoretical Medicine vs. Practical Medicine
	The medieval diet
	Folk medicine
	Medieval medicine and folk medicine
	Women and folk medicine
	Theoretical medicine and folk medicine
	Efficacy and folk belief
	Women as healers
	Magic and belief
5. The Trotula and the Works of Hildegard of Bingen
	From Book on the Conditions of Women
	From On Treatments for Women
	Hildegard of Bingen
	Hildegard on natural philosophy and medicine
	Dietary recommendations from Causae et Curae
	Physica
	Alcohol consumption
	Hildegard on alcohol
	Similarities and contrasts in the Trotula and the works of Hildegard
	Were Hildegard and Trota practitioners of folk medicine?
6. The Legacy of the Trotula
	Tacuinum sanitatis
	Early cookbooks and health guidebooks
	Religion and the body
	Medieval gynaecological texts
	The Sekenesse of Wymmen
7. Women’s Diets and Standards of Beauty
	Cosmetics
	Beauty and morality
	Medieval conduct literature
	Medieval ideas of beauty
	Obesity
	The body as symbol
8. Religious Conflict and Religious Accommodation
	The female body in medieval literature
	Food, sexuality, and religion
	Consequences of overindulgence
	Women and fasting
	Religion and medical recommendations for diet
9. Evolving Advice for Women’s Health Through Diet
	Women’s diet advice in the Early Modern Period
	The death of humoral theory
	Consciousness of health, consciousness of fashion
	Pregnancy and diet in the modern era
	Are women’s diets consistent across cultures?
	Conclusion
Bibliography
Index