Recreation in the Renaissance

The Medical Discourse 19
was available in Latin translation by 1100; and, as an introduction (in
Greek, Isagoge) to Galen’s The Art of Medicine, it became the first section
of the Articella, the standard medieval medical textbook anthology. 2
The general tenets of humoral theory are well known. Human health
was believed to depend on the equilibrium between four bodily fluids
(blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile or melancholy). This list was
related to a series of other factors, which showed the strict connections
linking the human being to the cosmos: the four elements (air, fire,
earth and water), the primary qualities (hot vs cold, dry vs wet), the four
seasons, and the ages of man. As well as suggesting avoidance of excess
or deficiency of each of these factors, the theory was meant to explain
variations between individuals, which could be interpreted as idiosyncratic
balances, or humoral mixtures (‘temperaments’ or complexions).
It should be stressed that in early modern Europe this belief system was
shared by learned and popular medicine alike; its principles, astrological
connections and dietetic implications enjoyed widespread diffusion
via such media as proverbs and almanacs, as the popularity of the verse
Salernitan Rule of Health easily demonstrates. When Renaissance humanism
became available in the European marketplace of ideas, it provided
deeper cultural meaning to concepts of balance and harmony, both
within the individual and between man and cosmos, in all those aspects
of traditional medical thought in which notions of equilibrium were
central.
In Johannitius’s adaptation of Galen’s thought and vocabulary, the
theoretical part of medicine was concerned with three groups of factors
which affected human health: the naturals, the ‘nonnaturals’ and the
contranaturals. To the first list belonged those things which constitute
the body; to the last disease, its causes and consequences. The most
common series of nonnaturals comprised: 1. air; 2. food and drink; 3.
motion and rest; 4. sleep and waking; 5. repletion and evacuation; 6.
the accidents of the soul. It should be clear that the category was problematic.
Certainly ‘nonnatural’ did not mean against nature; it was
rather a middle ground, whose elements could either benefit or harm
human health. It goes without saying that such occasions were unavoidable,
their use in no way optional: one cannot live without breathing,
eating or sleeping. The correct use of the nonnaturals was therefore one
of the subjects of practical, as well as theoretical medicine. It consisted
in a regimen of health. 3 Preventive medicine (in Greek, hygiene) was
regarded as an essential part of medicine; the idea that, concerning
healthy bodies, it does not belong to medicine at all, played only a marginal
role in early modern developments. 4