Conserving health in early modern culture

Book excerpt: Did early modern people care about their health? And what did it mean to lead a healthy life in Italy and England? Through a range of textual evidence, images and material artefacts Conserving health in early modern culture documents the profound impact which ideas about healthy living had on daily practices as well as on intellectual life and the material world in this period. In both countries staying healthy was understood as depending on the careful management of the six ‘Non-Naturals’: the air one breathed, food and drink, excretions, sleep, exercise and repose, and the ‘passions of the soul’. To a close scrutiny, however, models of prevention differed considerably in Italy and England, reflecting country-specific cultural, political and medical contexts and different confessional backgrounds. The following two chapters are available open access on a CC-BY-NC-ND license here: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=633180 3 'Ordering the infant': caring for newborns in early modern England - Leah Astbury 4 'She sleeps well and eats an egg': convalescent care in early modern England - Hannah Newton