ABSTRACT
English medical theorists and practitioners experienced a watershed moment in the Early Modern period when the Galenic model of bodily humours, based on (often erroneous) Aristotelian biology, became the object of serious doubt and eventually was found to be contrary to the facts derived from human dissection and the emerging Baconian method of scientific research. Nevertheless, humoural theory, widely known even beyond the medical community, formed the basis of medical and dietary sciences, diet being considered one of the most problematic causes of personal disturbance – corporeally, emotionally, and spiritually. People’s health, actions, emotions, and thoughts were believed to be affected by what and how much food they consumed, the properties of those foods, the methods by which food was prepared, and the humoural constitution of each individual. Furthermore, due to the lack of chemical and pharmaceutical research, foods (especially, but not exclusively, indigenous plants) were used – legitimately and not – as medicines throughout England by medical practitioners, including midwives and apothecaries, by mountebanks and charlatans, and, necessarily, by lay people. It is not surprising, then, that numerous recipe books emerged as sourcebooks for family nutritional and cultural observances (such as religious fasting and celebratory feasting). Much scholarship has been given to such texts and the socio-economic and cultural norms and oddities extrapolated from them.
