Visualizing Household Health: Medieval Women, Art, and Knowledge in the Régime du corps by Jennifer Borland (review)

Abstract

L ike many teachers of the history of medicine, I have resorted to online searches for “medieval medicine” or “medieval health” to find engaging images for my slides and handouts. One of the most common results of these searches is a historiated initial V showing a bloodletting procedure in action: a barbersurgeon is incising a vein on the inner arm of a rosycheeked man, who looks away as his blood flows out into a bowl. This image comes from British Library Sloane MS 2435, the oldest copy of the popular healthcare manual Régime du corps (hereafter Rdc), attributed to Aldobrandino of Siena, personal physician to Countess Beatrice of Savoy. Written in French around 1256, the Rdc is noteworthy as an early example of the vernacularization of learned medicine in later medieval European society. Seventyfive medieval copies of Rdc survive, of which twentythree are illustrated with various depictions of medical treatments, copulation, breastfeeding, drunkenness, clothing, and food. Not surprisingly, many of these illustrations have been reproduced widely to educate, amuse, and titillate modern audiences, but rarely with any documentation or contextualization, leaving students and untrained professors to assume that such illustrations are typical of medieval medical thought and health practices.