Evaluating the Evidence 10.2: Healthy Living

310

Healthy Living

In this illustration from a very popular fourteenth-century Latin handbook on maintaining health and well-being, women with their sleeves rolled up prepare cloth for medical uses; the woman on the left is trimming small threads off with a one-bladed shear, and the woman on the right is boiling the cloth to bleach it. The men in the background eat a meal and drink wine. The text of this handbook was a translation of an Arabic medical treatise, made in the kingdom of Sicily, the site of much cultural borrowing.

image
(From Tacuinum Sanitatis [vellum]/Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Austria/Alinari/Bridgeman Images)

EVALUATE THE EVIDENCE

  1. Cleanliness and moderation were recommended as essential to healthy living in this handbook. How does the artist convey these values in this scene?
  2. Given what you have learned about medieval medical care, why might a handbook like this have been popular with literate urban residents?