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
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