Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy explores in detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources - ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects - this volume demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention was being developed in
sixteenth-century Italian cities. This culture sought to regulate the factors thought to influence health, and centred particularly on the home and domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption,
forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. This study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. However, medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes. The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new
impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of wellbeing, re-proposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates.
Broader social and religious trends also played a key role; most significantly, the nexus between attention to one's health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation.Six key areas were thought to influence the balance of 'humours' within the body and Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy is organised into six main chapters which reflect these concerns: Air, Exercise, Sleep, Food and
Drink, Managing the Emotions, and Bodily Hygiene. The volume is richly illustrated, and offers an accessible but fascinating glimpse into both the domestic lives and health preoccupations of the early modern
Italians.
Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy explores in detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources - ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects - this volume demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention was being developed in
sixteenth-century Italian cities. This culture sought to regulate the factors thought to influence health, and centred particularly on the home and domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption,
forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. This study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. However, medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes. The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new
impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of wellbeing, re-proposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates.
Broader social and religious trends also played a key role; most significantly, the nexus between attention to one's health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation.Six key areas were thought to influence the balance of 'humours' within the body and Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy is organised into six main chapters which reflect these concerns: Air, Exercise, Sleep, Food and
Drink, Managing the Emotions, and Bodily Hygiene. The volume is richly illustrated, and offers an accessible but fascinating glimpse into both the domestic lives and health preoccupations of the early modern
Italians.
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1: Print and a Culture of Prevention
2: Practices of Healthy Living: the Sources
3: Worrying About the Air
4: A Good Night's Sleep
5: Gentle Exercise and Genteel Living
6: The Well-Tempered Man
7: 'Salute' (Cheers)! Drinking to Your Health
8: Excretions as Excrements: the Hygiene of the Body
Conclusions
Bibliography
Tessa Storey is a Research Associate at Royal Holloway, University
of London. Since 2009, she has been working as a research associate
on the Wellcome funded research project which has made this book
possible. She has published a number of chapters and articles on
early modern Rome, as well as a book, Carnal Commerce in Counter
Reformation Rome (2008). Sandra Cavallo is Professor of Early
Modern History and co-director of the Centre for the Study of
the
Body and Material Culture at Royal Holloway, University of London
and specialises in the history of medicine, gender and material
culture. Her publications include the books Charity and Power in
Early Modern
Italy (1995) and Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy:
Identities, Families, Masculinities (2007), and the edited volumes
Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1999), Spaces,
Objects, and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine (2008),
Domestic Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe (2009) and
A Cultural History of Childhood and the Family vol. 3, The Early
Modern Age (2010).
the book provides a fascinating and incomparably rich and nuanced
contribution to our knowledge of the pursuit of health in the
domestic environment, in the process instilling meaning and
functionality into the everyday objects of the time.
*David Gentilcore, History Today*
excellent, meticulously researched, and informative ... a terrific,
scholarly book.
*Douglas Biow, American Historical Review*
This book deserves a wide readership. Its imaginative research,
rigorous arguments and robust engagement with scholarship will
provoke the interest of specialists, and the clarity of the
exposition will make it essential reading for students.
*Alexandra Bamji, English Historical Review*
Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy addresses an important
theme overlooked in recent studies of the history of Renaissance
medicine, which tend to stress the demands of the marketplace and a
culture of curing rather than of prevention. Cavallo and Storey's
exhaustively researched book treats the reader to a wealth of
fascinating details about everyday life in early modern Italy, from
architecture and interior design to sport and exercise. The book
makes an important contribution to our understanding of the role of
the popular press in inculcating a sense of empowerment over deeply
personal matters. It also reminds us of the enduring relevance of
the classical tradition.
*William Eamon, Bulletin of the History of Medicine*
Cavallo and Storey's important book ought to be obligatory reading
for anyone interested in the history of medicine in early modern
Italy. It will also generously reward other readers seeking to
benefit from its bounty of illuminating insights pertaining to art
history, gender studies, and social history.
*Sheila Barker, CAA Reviews*
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