Abstract
While working on public health in the fourteenth-century Crown of Aragon, I analyzed a medical literary genre called in Latin regimen sanitatis, health and its preservation.1 I soon realized (1) that the factors that influenced medicine in late medieval Spanish kingdoms were also connected to changes in this kind of medical writing;2 (2) that economic and ideological factors had an influence on the kind of readership of this genre that evolved during the fourteenth century (originally directed only to wealthy individuals, i.e. members of royalty and/or of civil or ecclesiastical nobility, the genre came to be extended to the population in general, especially the new urban social groups); and (3) that the use of the regimina by the most significant Christian physicians to express their thoughts and practical advice on the plague of 1348, and the subsequent acceptance of that advice by contemporary society,3 could be another factor explaining the expanding audience of this medical literary genre.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See L. García-Ballester, “Medical Science in Thirteenth-Century Castile: Problems and Prospects”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 61 (1987) 183–202.
G. Beaujouan, La Science en Espagne aux XIVeet XVesiècles (Paris 1967), p. 7.
See n. 1 above, and L. García-Ballester, La medicina a la València medieval (Valencia 1988), pp. 101–07;
L. García-Ballester, M.R. McVaugh, and A. Rubio-Vela, Medical Licensing and Learning in Fourteenth-Century Valencia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 79, pt 6 (Philadelphia 1989).
F. Eiximenis, Liber de virtutibus et peccatis, sive Ars maior praedicationis (1385);
see Martí de Barcelona, “Fra Francesc Eiximenis”, Estudis Franciscans 22 (1928) 437–500 at 478.
See H. Schipperges, Lebendige Heilkunde (Olten-Freiburg i. Br. 1962). At the present time, Pedro Gil-Sotres (University of La Laguna, Spain) is working on the rise and development of this medical genre in 13th- and 14th-century Latin medicine.
D. Jacquart, “A l’aube de la renaissance médicale des XIe–XIIe siècles: L’Isagoge Johannitii et son traducteur”, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartes 144 (1986) 209–40.
L.J. Rather, “The ‘Six Things Non-Natural’: A Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and a Phrase”, Clio medica 3 (1968) 337–47 at 337.
Bernard de Gordon in his Regimen sanitatis says: “regimen sanitatis consistit in debita applicacione sex rerum non naturalium”, De conservatione 4: Regimen Sanitatis, Vatican MS. Pal. lat. 1174, fol. 72v. Cited by L.E. Demaitre, Doctor Bernard de Gordon: Professor and Practitioner, Studies and Texts 51 (Toronto 1980), p. 69, n. 166.
P.-G. Ottosson, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy: A Study of Commentaries on Galen’s “Tegni” (ca. 1300–1450) (Uppsala 1982). See the interesting distinction introduced by Danielle Jacquart between complexio, linked with the doctrine of qualities, and temperamentum, based on humoral theory: “De crasis a complexio: Note sur le vocabulaire du tempérament en latin médiéval”, in Textes médicaux latins antiques, ed. G. Sabbah (St. Etienne 1984), pp. 71–76.
M.R. McVaugh, “Arnald of Villanova and Bradwardine’s Law”, Isis 58 (1967) 56–64; “Quantified Medical Theory and Practice at Fourteenth-Century Montpellier”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 43 (1969) 397–413; see also his edition, Arnaldi de Villanova aphorismi de gradibus, Arnaldi… opera medica omnia 2 (Granada and Barcelona 1975), Introduction, pp. 1–136, esp. 75–122.
L. García-Ballester, “Galen as a Medical Practitioner: Problems in Diagnosis”, in Galen: Problems and Prospects, ed. V. Nutton (London 1981), pp. 13–46, esp. 36–38.
N. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton 1987), pp. 221ff.
S. Munter, ed., Moshe ben Maimon (Maimonides), Regimen sanitatis… Hebrew Translation of R. Moshe ibn Tibbon… (Jerusalem 1957), pp. x–xi.
See J.M. Madurell Marimón and J. Rubió y Balaguer, Documentos para la historia de la imprenta y librería en Barcelona (1474–1553) (Barcelona 1955), pp. 23–29, 43–45;
Marimón, “Documents culturals medievals (1307–1485)”, Boletin de la Real Academia de buenas letras de Barcelona 38 (1979–82) 301–473 at 339–41.
A. Díaz García, “Un tratado nazarí sobre alimentos: Al-Kalam Ala-l-Aqdiya de al-Arbuli. Edición, traducción, y estudio, con glosarios (I)”, Cuadernos de estudios medievales (Granada) 6–7 (1978–79) 5–91 at 9.
L. García-Ballester, M.R. McVaugh, and J.A. Paniagua, “Catálogo de incipits de los manuscritos médicos latinos atribuídos a Arnau de Vilanova” (Barcelona 1974-), typewritten copy.
Arnald of Villanova wrote to the king: “Order, (Sir), that any Jew, as long as he professes his faith, does not dare to do medical practice with any Christian”; repr. M. Menéndez-Pelayo, Historia de los heterodoxos españoles, 8 vols, (Madrid 1963 [1st edn 1880]), vol. VIII: Apéndice I: Documentos, p. 276;
see P. Diepgen, Arnald of Villanova als Politiker und Laientheologe (Berlin and Leipzig 1909), p. 89.
Frederick of Sicily in his Constitutiones followed Arnald’s advice; see H. Finke, Acta Aragonensia, 2 vols (Berlin and Leipzig 1908), I, 698.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1992 Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
García-Ballester, L. (1992). Changes in theRegimina sanitatis. In: Campbell, S., Hall, B., Klausner, D. (eds) Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21882-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21882-0_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-21884-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-21882-0
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)