Bodily and Spiritual Hygiene in Medieval and Early Modern Literature by Albrecht Classen

Author:Albrecht Classen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

David Tomíček

Water, Environment, and Dietetic Rules in Bohemian Sources of the Early Modern Times

David Tomíček, John Evangelista Purkyne University, Czech Republic

The present essay will focus on the issue of water as the natural substance most closely linked with hygiene. It will try to explain the role which water played in common life during the early-modern times, and how the contemporaries valued it and judged its influence on the environment. The material this paper will focus on predominantly draws on Bohemian sources originating from the period between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries and places emphasis on physicians’ writings about dietetic ideas.

Dietetics and, generally, medicine of this period stemmed from the humoral theory, with its origins in classical antiquity.1077 The teaching about the four bodily humors further developed the overall philosophical concept of four basic elements, which form the substance of the created world. In the human body, the characteristic qualities of these elements are reflected in the analogous qualities of the bodily humors, while the balance between them guarantees the condition perceived as health. If the balance is disturbed, it results in an unfortunate situation demonstrated as illness. A collapsed balance among the bodily humors is viewed as a natural cause of death. During the high Middle Ages, the given theoretical foundation was further developed into the teaching about the so-called “six things unnatural to humans” (sex res non naturales), understood as the basis of the doctrine of a healthy regimen.1078 In this form, dietetics was lectured on at medieval universities, which probably also provided the basis for the literary genre called regimens of health (regimina sanitatis).1079 Medieval dietetics highlighted two chief principles: avoiding extreme expressions in all activities and changing one’s accustomed habits to the least possible extent. The subject of water in the context of this form of dietetics belonged to no less than three of the six groups of the unnatural things. It was connected with food and drinks (cibus et potus), bodily excretions and secretions (excreta et secreta), and environment (aer). The following analysis will demonstrate that these concerns largely determined the perception of water at that time.

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