IMC 2016: Sessions

This series of panels engages food as both treatment for illness and the reverse, the medieval misunderstanding of food as treatment. Further, some of the papers look at how dietary deficiencies led to medical misunderstanding of health conditions, at how art and literature treat food as symbolic of good health and virtuous living. All together, the three panels on 'Diet and Health', 'Curatives for Ails', and 'Beliefs, Deficiencies, and Appetites' provide an overview of the connections between food and health in the Middle Ages. This group of papers will investigate food as a medical treatment for health conditions, especially long-term illness, and as a preventative for illness. The focus of this panel is the connection between food and cure. The papers cover comparisons between suggested remedies for Paget's Disease of Bone and findings in skeletal remains, Isaac Israeli's Universal and Particular Diets, and food as medicine in Arabic medicine for diuresis. The third paper looks at treatment of the virtues in both food production and consumption. The symbolic attributes for c. 15th-century illustrations of the theological and cardinal virtues provides insight into how medieval society connected food to the virtues - including how some of those provided health and treatment.